Genesis 41

³⁷ This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. ³⁸ And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” ³⁹ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. ⁴⁰ You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.” ⁴¹ And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” ⁴² Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. ⁴³ And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, “Bow the knee!” Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt. ⁴⁴ Moreover, Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” ⁴⁵ And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenath-paneah. And he gave him in marriage Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On. So Joseph went out over the land of Egypt. ⁴⁶ Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt. ⁴⁷ During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, ⁴⁸ and he gathered up all the food of these seven years, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food in the cities. He put in every city the food from the fields around it. ⁴⁹ And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured. ⁵⁰ Before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore them to him. ⁵¹ Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” ⁵² The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”  ⁵³ The seven years of plenty that occurred in the land of Egypt came to an end, ⁵⁴ and the seven years of famine began to come, as Joseph had said. There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. ⁵⁵ When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.” ⁵⁶ So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. ⁵⁷ Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.

I have a natural suspicion of Christian mantras. I rarely disagree with them properly defined. It is just that these mantras, as they are repeated and, inevitably, commercialized and monetized, tend to take on the air of talismans in a lot of popular usage. That is, they become almost magical incantations in the popular mind that are recited for good luck.

Some of these mantras include:

• WWJD?
• Jesus take the wheel.
• Not today Satan!
• Won’t He do it?!

These mantras have a long history in Christianity. Think, for instance, of “the Jesus prayer” that many Christians say over and over and over: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That prayer seems to have emerged out of 5^th century Christian devotional practice. I of course cannot object in any way to saying sincerely “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Properly handled that is a powerful and beautiful prayer. But, again, it must not be reduced to some kind of talisman, the mere recitation of which supposedly brings you good fortune or the favor of God. Prayers need to be meant, not manipulated.

Another popular Christian mantra is “Let go and let God.” Yes, this too can be abused, especially if it used to justify complete passivity in the Christian life, thereby undercutting the Christian disciplines and Christian effort. But, properly understood, it means letting go of our own ambitions and need to control and trusting that God will work in and through us to accomplish His own ends. Properly understood, “Let go and let God” is a helpful idea. And properly understood, I believe we see “Let go and let God” demonstrated rightly in the latter half of Genesis 41.

Let God handle your advancement.

Joseph finds himself suddenly and without prior warning, after a two-year stint in prison, standing before, interpreting the dreams of, and then proposing a plan for saving Egypt to mighty Pharaoh himself! Joseph, having had all pretenses of control stripped from him there in the prison, gives himself to God and speaks with boldness, clarity, and integrity. Let us see the result of Joseph’s letting go:

³⁷ This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. ³⁸ And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” ³⁹ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. ⁴⁰ You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.” ⁴¹ And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” ⁴² Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. ⁴³ And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, “Bow the knee!” Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt. ⁴⁴ Moreover, Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” ⁴⁵ And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenath-paneah. And he gave him in marriage Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On. So Joseph went out over the land of Egypt. ⁴⁶ Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt. ⁴⁷ During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, ⁴⁸ and he gathered up all the food of these seven years, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food in the cities. He put in every city the food from the fields around it. ⁴⁹ And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured.

God promotes and advances Joseph’s station in life. God exalts Joseph! Joseph, on his own, was powerless. But see what God does. Pharaoh, seeing the hand of God on Joseph:

• places Joseph over his house;
• gives Joseph the authority to command;
• gives him a signet ring;
• dresses him in finery;
• gives him gold ornamentation;
• makes him ride throughout Egypt in a chariot of honor;
• makes everybody bow to him;
• gives him a new name;
• gives him a wife;
• placed the administration of the crucial food program under him.

In other words, God lifted Joseph out of the pit and placed him over Egypt. The ESV Study Bible makes an interesting observation that helps us define what was happening in terms of the political and cultural realities of the time:

Joseph is made the “vizier,” to govern all the people of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself. (A document from the Tomb of Rekhmire in the Late Bronze Age tells of the duties of the vizier in Egypt. He is the “grand steward of all Egypt,” and all activities of state are under his control.)…It was not unknown for Semites to attain high positions in the Egyptian government. For example, during the first half of the second millennium B.C., an “Asiatic” (see note on 37:28) named Hur became superintendent of the Royal Seal (or “chancellor”) of Egypt. Hur is well known from numerous scarab-seals of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries B.C.[1]

The HCSB Study Bible summarized the situation like this:

Joseph, who was now 30 years old, had been transformed by God in 13 years from an imprisoned foreign slave to the world’s second most powerful man. He who had spent years in prison now went throughout the land of Egypt overseeing a project that would save the lives of untold thousands.[2]

What is important to note is that it is God who advances Joseph, not Joseph! And note that in advancing and promoting Joseph in the way He did, God rectified two past wrongs inflicted upon Joseph.

First, by having Joseph clothed in “garments of fine linen” (v.42), God through Pharaoh was restoring what had previously been taken from Joseph. The famous “coat of many colors” had played its part in stoking the resentment of Joseph’s brothers. They had taken it from him, dipped it in blood, and used it to deceive Joseph’s father, Jacob. Joseph, in other words, had lost his precious garment. But here, after Joseph’s trials and suffering, God gave him an even greater garment! When we “let go and let God” God will give us that which is greater than whatever we have lost.

Furthermore, in Joseph’s exaltation God brought about Joseph’s vindication. Think about it: as Pharaoh’s right-hand man, and based on Pharaoh’s own words, Joseph was now the authority over…you guessed it…Potiphar! Joseph was placed by God in a position over the one who had wronged him (under the influence of his wife). Joseph, in other words, did not have to seek revenge. He had let go of all of that and handed it over to God. Then God, in His wisdom and perfect timing, lifted Joseph above Potiphar and his wife. What would Joseph do?

In a charming and insightful bit of imaginative interpretation, Ephrem the Syrian, the 4^th century deacon and writer of hymns, imagined Potiphar running back to his wife after seeing that Joseph had been exalted.

Potiphar said to his wife, “Joseph, our servant, has become our master. He whom we sent to prison without clothing, Pharaoh has now clothed with a garment of fine white linen. He whom we cast prostrate into prison now sits upon the chariot of Pharaoh. He whom we had bound in irons now has a gold necklace set on his neck…How then can I look again up him whom my eyes are unable to look upon?”

At this, Ephrem imagines, Potiphar’s wife tells her husband not to fear. She tells him that Joseph will do him no harm since “he knows that the disgrace that came upon him in our home, whether justly or not, came upon him from my hands.” She tells him that if Joseph is going to exact revenge he will justly exact it against her and not her husband. So Potiphar returns to the royal court and there Joseph shows him mercy “because he knew that it was God who had permitted his brothers to throw him into the pit in the desert, and [who had delivered him] from the pit, in order to send him in irons to Egypt, and who had permitted his master to send him to prison so that from that humble seat he might set him upon the chariot of Pharaoh.”[3]

It is a liberating thing to let go and to let God! Had Joseph not let go he would have gone mad in the prison or majorly stumbled in the palace. As it was, he handed it to God and seized the opportunities that God provided Him to speak the truth. He left His advancement to God and God advanced him!

Let God lead you past and let God lead you through.

When we let go we are also freed to let God lead us past our past and through our present. That this was happening in Joseph’s life can be seen in the naming of his two sons to his wife, Asenath.

⁵⁰ Before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore them to him. ⁵¹ Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” ⁵² The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

This is most telling! Consider the names:

• Manasseh: “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.”
• Ephraim: “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

Through his sons’ names Joseph made theological statements about:

• The past.
• The present.

The future, clearly, he had already put in God’s hands. But concerning the past, Joseph was announcing that God had set him free from its tyranny. He would not live in bitterness and resentment concerning his past. Nor would his own earlier life define him. Paul, in Philippians 3, will say something very similar.

¹³ Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

There is that word “forget” again. Joseph said that God had “made me forget” his earlier hardships. Paul said that he “forgets what lies behind.” As a result of this sanctified forgetting, both men could move forward.

Back to our mantra, letting go must mean letting go of the tyranny of the past!

It also means letting God lead you through the present. “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” God, in other words, was fully in control of Joseph’s present circumstances. He had learned to let go of the need to try to control the present. Two years of wrongful imprisonment will do that to a person…or it will destroy a person. We must decide if we will give it to God!

Philip Yancey has written of the power of the past to control the present if we let it. He writes:

If you ask a bomb-throwing teenager in Northern Ireland or a machete-wielding soldier in Rwanda or a sniper in the former Yugoslavia why they are killing, they may not even know.  Ireland is still seeking revenge for atrocities Oliver Cromwell committed in the seventeenth century; Rwanda and Burundi are carrying on tribal feuds that extend long past anyone’s memory; Yugoslavia is avenging memories from World War II and trying to prevent a replay of what happened six centuries ago.[4]

And D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, in his book Spiritual Depression, writes:

Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and for ever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: `It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ’.[5]

To this we can say Amen! and Amen!

Let God transform your faithfulness in the pit into impact for the Kingdom.

Notice also that by letting go and letting God do as He wished, Joseph saw his ministry and effectiveness radically widened! Joseph’s impact ultimately for God and His Kingdom positively explodes out of the pit and goes beyond even Egypt to touch the whole world! Listen:

⁵³ The seven years of plenty that occurred in the land of Egypt came to an end, ⁵⁴ and the seven years of famine began to come, as Joseph had said. There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. ⁵⁵ When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.” ⁵⁶ So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. ⁵⁷ Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.

Did you see that?! “All the earth came to Egypt to Joseph…”

Only God could do such a thing! But Joseph could have missed this amazing work of God had he been stunted by some vindictive need to control or exact revenge or had he been diminished through harbored bitterness and rage there in that pit. But he was not! He was faithful to God in the pit so God made Him great in the world!

It is not just that God lifted Joseph high. It is also that God gave Joseph’s life a world-wide impact! Truly this validates powerfully the famous words of Jeremiah 29:

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Yes! God knows the plans He has for us! Let go and let God!

“Does this mean,” you may be tempted to ask, “that if I let go then God will make me famous?”

To ask that is to miss the point. The answer to such a question would be that if you truly let go then you will no longer be concerned with your own fame! It will be enough to be used by God at all! God may bring the nations to you. He may just bring your neighbor. But, in the economy of God, these are equally great. “Greatness” in the Kingdom is defined by faithfulness not by results. But this much is true: if you give yourself to Jesus with reckless abandon and get yourself out of the way, your impact will be exactly what He wants it to be and that is the greatest impact you can have! If you do that, if you let go, then you and I—while recognizing, obviously, the unique ministry and role of Mary—will be able to sing with Mary her Magnificat from Luke 1:

⁴⁶ And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸ for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹ for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰ And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; ⁵² he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; ⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. ⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵ as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

Again, we will not be able to sing this in the exact way that Mary did, of course, for she was honored to be the mother of Jesus. But the principles of Mary’s song resound throughout scripture for all who let go and give themselves to God:

• God looks on the humble estate of His people;
• God does great things for His people;
• God exalts His humble people.

The Father exalts the lowly. The Father accomplishes His will through the most unlikely of people in the most unlikely of ways.

Just as God worked a great work through the humility of Joseph and the humility of Mary, He worked an even greater work through the humility of the Son, Jesus Christ. Let us remember: Jesus came lowly in His first advent. He surrendered Himself to the will of the Father. He went low, low, low, even to the cross of Calvary. And God raised Him up and now draws men and women and boys and girls the world over to Him! All who call on the name of the risen Christ will be saved. The earth is truly coming to Jesus, the greater Joseph.

God is in the business of lifting up the humble and changing the world through His willing servants.

Let go.

Let God.

 

[1] Crossway Bibles. ESV Study Bible (Kindle Locations 18213-18221). Good News Publishers/Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.

[2] Holman Bible Editorial Staff, HCSB Study Bible (Kindle Locations 90323-90325). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[3] Mark Sheridan, ed., Genesis 12;50. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed. Thomas C. Oden. Old Testament II (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p.268-269.

[4] Philip Yancey.  What’s So Amazing About Grace.  (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.83.

[5] David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure – Highlight Loc. 414-15 | Added on Monday, May 24, 2010, 09:57 PM