Being Joseph: The Brother Who Restored a Family and Nurtured a Nation

Author

Introduction

This book is written first from a pastoral perspective, then, second, for practical application to the Christian believer’s life. We are given the great privilege in the Bible of seeing the mistakes of others. Surely we would be fools to not attempt to learn from them.

The lives of the Old Testament characters are told with almost cruel openness. Their good deeds and bad attitudes, their sins with all their details, and their repentance—instantly or only after years of hardship—are all there. Their private lives are open to us to examine for our good.

In this book we will look at the life of Joseph. He’s a beautiful character with very few, if any, faults at all! However, he’s surrounded by many people with many faults, all of whom confront him and cause him to suffer. In the Old Testament narrative we are invited, then, to regularly stop reading, take note, meditate, and learn.

The book is intended for all ages and all types of people. We are, after all, simply looking at a life that in great measure was just like our own. We see Joseph infrequently in his childhood and in detail in his teenage years. As he grows into manhood we are privileged to view his rare beauty and the failures of his family and others around him. In it all God is working out His own great plan of salvation. He will bring Jacob and his twelve sons to Egypt to make a nation of slaves into the greatest nation in the world, from which will come the Messiah, the Christ child, Jesus, the Saviour of sinners.

The times and cultures are ancient, around 1650 BC. Yet we are drawn to the characters because they are perfectly recognizable, easy to relate to, and just like us! After all, what is new about favouritism, family strife, hatred, travelling to foreign lands, fortunes rising and falling, relationships, and all the drama therein? These are the substance of daily life in every generation, nation, and culture. The follower of Jesus Christ is able to see in this story how to act in faith as Joseph did. He looked at the world and his circumstances through spiritual eyes and expressed attitudes and reactions that pleased God. Joseph’s older brothers, on the other hand, failed in this. They allowed their carnal natures to rule their responses and their hearts.

Hopefully you will think deeper about the Bible characters and stories as we see behind the scenes and cautiously read between the lines. This book is not intended to be theologically heavy; nor is it aimed at typological issues as such. Both of these and many other approaches to the Scriptures are evident in the course of the book, but the focus of the author is to enrich ordinary believers’ lives by introducing them to the details of events that are passed over if we read too quickly.

Whoever you may be, whatever you do, you must become aware of who you are, in the deepest sense, in your own heart and mind and self-awareness, and above all you must come to know yourself before God and among men.

The aim of the book is to increase your love for God’s Holy Word and to enrich your daily lives in this difficult world today.

SECTION I:

BEGINNINGS

chapter one

The Beginning of Things

Rachel had no children of her own, but she had given children to her husband, Jacob—in a sort of way! They were born to his other wives. So often, the schemes of the natural man look something like a solution. Here they produced children. Yet deep down we sense that this was not what God had in mind to solve Rachel’s problem. The children born would be the heads of the tribes of Israel, and God would use them to further His purposes. He would bless them. But they were not Rachel’s children!

Of course Rachel knew this because she remained barren. There would be no real fruitfulness, no Joseph, until Rachel touched the throne of God, and He intervened. Rachel did, God did, and Joseph was born. This is such a fundamental subject for our understanding of how God works.

Spiritual children are born of God. Spiritual answers are defined by the intervention of God, in one way or another. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). The flesh never crosses over, never morphs into the spirit! The beginning of things is determined by their very being, so spiritual things remain spiritual and worldly things remain worldly. Jesus said we must be born again (John 3:3). A new life is what He gives—a spiritual life to set against the life of the flesh.

What if Rachel had prayed sooner? It appears that she tried every other human method before she turned to prayer! What if she had prayed first? Would Joseph have arrived sooner? We don’t know, but it’s doubtful, because God is working to a plan. It’s not rigid in its daily outworking, but it determines His overall purposes. He had reasons for keeping Rachel waiting. It may not even have been Rachel He was waiting for! It was His plan that mattered.

Rachel eventually stopped trying to fix things herself. She stopped struggling and it appears from the narrative that she did turn to prayer, because the Bible says that the Lord heard Rachel’s cry (Genesis 30:22). This is a change in her. Prayer takes all that striving away, and it brings a humble submissive rest in the Lord, a dovelike peace.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is such a beautiful example of this spirit. She submissively embraced the call to bear the Christ child. She quietly accepted God’s call. Our acceptance of the will of God often requires an enormous spiritual, psychological, cultural, and religious challenge. Mary gave the world a beautiful feminine declaration of this submission. Rachel was perhaps a mere shadow of Mary, but Joseph was born!

How timelessly attractive this humble, submissive spirit is in the Lord’s children! It’s never slavish. It never reduces the subject. Often, the more genuine the humility and the more deep the submission, the more the individual is exalted! Look at Mary. She had such a beautiful spirit that the greatest civilizations of all time have exercised themselves to declare it, to depict it, to carve it and canvas it, to voluminously fill libraries with it. In their music, art, and literature they extol, in countless languages and nations, this spirit in Mary. Also, and more so, it’s seen in the Lord Jesus Christ when He said, Not My will, but Yours, be done (Luke 22:42).

The Holy Bible, inspired by God, records this submission in ordinary people in their acceptance of His will when faced with the problems of life. We see this in the story of Joseph. His ordinary life was full of problems without an apparent point. His mind must have been full of questions, perhaps like yours. He was, after all, just a youth when our story starts proper, Joseph being seventeen years of age.

chapter two

Naming Things

Joseph would have been told about his own birth. It was such an answer to prayer! It was such an intervention! What mother would not tell her child about that? Rachel would have told him how she had wanted a child and hoped and failed and then rested, and finally he was born, in answer to her prayer. She felt it all so clearly. She wanted to record it so that everyone would understand that her child was a blessing from God. Her spiritual joy at his arrival was expressed by giving him a meaningful name—Joseph!

Would to God that every mother viewed every newborn child with great expectations and also with an infinite anticipation. That is, that each new life would be seen in the light of what an infinite God can do, both in and through it! Oh that conception itself would be restored in our society to such heights of positive awareness and that every birth would be understood to be something to be rejoiced in!

Joseph! His name means God will add. The practice of expressing our gratitude and joy at childbirth by the use of biblical names or at least meaningful names for our children was common in the Western world until very recently. The name Joseph conveys something about God. Rachel experienced God blessing her miraculously. Further, she believed this would not be a single experience. She therefore declared to one and all that God will add. Rachel encourages us not to limit the Almighty. There’s no limit to how often the Lord can bless you—He’s not stingy! God will add yet more blessings to you!

When Rachel is rejoicing over Joseph, she’s not restricting her thoughts to naming him or to the delivery of her first child. She’s not seeing only the full term of the pregnancy as God’s hand upon her. Her life of barrenness, her lifetime struggle, her late pregnancy, the birth—these are all seen by her as one continuous and connected event. This is the world view of those who believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). They see all of life as one continuous dealing with a good God.

Make sure that you publicly acknowledge such blessings in your life. And always be watching in humble submission for His next intervention, His next deliverance, His next providence, in your life.

chapter three

Childhood Things

In this narrative about Jacob and his family we are not told a lot about Joseph in the period from his birth until he was seventeen years of age. However, during his childhood years his family went through some amazing experiences as God dealt with Jacob, his father. This chapter looks at ten or twelve years of Joseph’s childhood, to examine briefly the influences on him as a youth. The years from age six to seventeen are formative in our lives. Let’s take a brief survey of the events over that period and see how they affected the boy.

Joseph was around six years old when his father, Jacob, left his father-in-law’s house to return to Canaan. On this journey Jacob was met by the angels of God at Mahanaim (Genesis 32:1). Did the six-year-old Joseph hear about this? We don’t know for certain, but what a memorable story for a child! God sends His angels to look after His children.

His father got up in the morning one day and limped for the rest of his life! Dad, why are you limping? Did Jacob, a father who loved his son, tell him how he had met with God during the night hours (Genesis 32:31) and how he had been affected by that meeting, that his very name had to be changed from Cheat to Prince, from Jacob to Israel? This may have been a bit too complicated a story to tell a child, but no doubt it was reinforced many times. God’s eternal secret work in the heart is visible to all around—Jacob limped, for the rest of his life! Dads, what a lesson to teach your children—how God has dealt with you in life, at home!

The boy Joseph was present when his father met Esau, his estranged brother (Genesis 33:4). Here Joseph had the opportunity to observe and listen to all the goings-on in the preparation for this meeting. He was at the actual meeting and saw the good parting at the end. These two brothers came from being murderous siblings yet met as long-lost friends and parted as renewed brothers. Surely this will be reflected in the life of Joseph and his siblings in a day to come! He learns the rich benefit of reconciliation, sees forgiveness in action, and feels the warmth of fellowship restored. He may even have observed how his father remained a little uncertain afterwards, despite Esau’s warmth.

He was present at Shechem when his father erected an altar called El Elohe Israel (Genesis 33:20). The boy Joseph may have laid some stones.

Laying stones is something that human beings have done and still do to this day. They feel they have fixed something when they lay a stone. Scottish mountains all have cairns at the top where weary climbers feel the joy and fulfillment of the climb or the walk to the top. They remember these stones all of their lives!

In Joshua 4:21 the people of Israel were told how to answer their children when they saw a stone memorial and asked, What do these stones mean? Surely Joseph, seeing the altar at Shechem take shape, primitive as it would have been, would have asked about those stones. Did he ask? Someone must have taken time to explain, surely! In Deuteronomy, the Bible counsels God’s people to teach God’s Word to their children in the real instances of life—when you walk by the way (Deuteronomy 11:19), on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deuteronomy 11:20), and when you sit in your house (Deuteronomy 11:19). That’s what was happening to Joseph under God’s direction.

When a little older and more of a youth than a child, he was present when the Dinah incidents occurred (Genesis 34). The incidents themselves from a family perspective are of interest here. Too young to take an active part, would Joseph had heard all the family talk? Would he not even feel in himself, as we might feel as we read, the anger of his brothers? He must have heard the righteous indignation they expressed at their father’s objection to their act of retribution. Was he puzzled by their inconsistency? Today, indignant at sin; tomorrow, perhaps not? Joseph learned about the dangers of careless sex—it can result in the death of innocents.

Would he not have been surprised, as his brothers were, by his father’s lack of response? Would Joseph not, like them, have been openly disappointed in his father? Israel, the prince with God, expressed fear of the surrounding nations (Genesis 34:30–31)! They may have debated timeless questions of the nature of true justice, forgiveness, the right to defend yourself, retribution, crime, and punishment. All these amazing topics may have swirled around his young head. Some of it may have stuck! He saw before he was seventeen that sex is not an innocent play activity.

We can only try to imagine what Joseph learned from these incidents of family life. Children naturally meditate upon events. They are little thinkers! The process is part of the human makeup. God uses these incidents to train us up, to gently shower or to thunder a storm of truth into our young hearts. The inherent force of truth penetrates young hearts and minds even without words, although we are commanded to use words in the training of our children.

In Genesis 35:2–5, Joseph watches as all the adults around him dispose of their foreign idols and the stuff of heathen religion. Didn’t the boy Joseph experience a revival of true religion in his family at this time? He felt the real and spiritual nature of this act. Surely he sensed a different atmosphere among them as they continued to journey but now exclusively with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!

This was a very rare and rich experience for him. It was not simply repairing external relationships in human terms. This was God’s people getting right with God! The family got rid of their foreign gods.

Many believers today, and many churches, have never experienced or observed what Joseph saw here as a boy. He learned spiritual resolve. He learned that spiritual repentance is always accompanied with practical expressions. He learned that the process may be tearful, but afterwards it bears forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness. He realized perhaps that God can fill our enemies with fear simply because we have seriously turned to Him.

In Genesis 35:7 Joseph is present on the journey to Bethel and observes his father building an altar there named El Bethel, "the God of the house of God." Would not a mother like Rachel take him aside and explain warmly the purpose and meaning of all these things?

Again, in Genesis 35:14, Joseph sees a commemorative stone pillar set up to remind them all, including Joseph, of the event at Bethel. Repetition is a good teacher. God uses it! Joseph again learns that men need to build more than one altar to God in a lifetime. He learns that the altar itself is just a heap of free stones, but every stone represents sacrifice and spiritual depth. Altars are milestones where men meet God in a life-changing way and are changed spiritually. What lessons to learn, and all before you’re seventeen!

In Genesis 35:16–20 Joseph is there when his mother dies giving birth to Benjamin. Joseph’s name predicted his younger brother Benjamin’s birth. What a powerful brotherly connection! Benjamin was that second blessing his mother looked for instantly after Joseph was born. All through Joseph’s life Benjamin reminded him that God answers prayer, particularly when you do things God’s way! He was a constant reminder of a mother’s good testimony.

The whole family is there with his mother Rachel to comfort her both in the birth of Benjamin and in her subsequent dying. Mothers often hold families together. What a loss, the loss of a mother! Joseph learns to deal with grief before he reaches seventeen. But note that the biblical narrative doesn’t draw attention to Rachel overmuch. It’s Jacob whose history this is, here in the book of Genesis.

In Genesis 35:22, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine, imagining it was a well-covered secret. But someone told Jacob, his father. Was it Joseph? If it was, he learned the secret that most secrets are not secrets at all!

Genesis 36 gives details