From Prisoner to Prince // Genesis 41 // Jerry Andrews

Let's ask the Holy Spirit's grace on the reading of God's Word.

Oh God, by your Holy Spirit, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we ought to do

to obey Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen.

A reading from Genesis 41:41-52.

So Pharaoh said to Joseph, I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.

Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph's finger.

He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck.

He had him ride in a chariot as his second in command, and people shouted before him, 'Make way!'

Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt.

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in

all Egypt.

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Asenath, daughter of Potiphar, priest of On,

to be his wife.

And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt.

Joseph was 30 Joseph was 33 years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

And Joseph went out from Pharaoh's presence and traveled throughout Egypt during the seven years of abundance; the land

produced plentifully.

Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities.

In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it.

Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea.

It was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.

Before the years of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath, daughter of Potiphar,

priest of On.

Joseph named his first the firstborn Manasseh and said, 'It is because God has made me forget

all my troubles and all my father's household.'

The second son he named Ephraim and said, 'It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my

suffering.'

This is the word of the Lord.

The lights come on.

I need to say a word about my appearance.

I know some of you are thinking this is marital difficulties.

In Lois's defense,

do not compare your wife's cooking unfavorably to your mother's.

Chicken dumplings is chicken dumplings.

No matter who lovingly gives it to you.

And when your wife tells you that she's been working out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you might want to check to see if it's yoga or taekwondo.

I know this is better advice to young husbands who are away on retreat right now.

There is a second possibility: successful surgical removal of skin cancer.

And I have a favorite explanation.

Hockey season has started.

You spend your retirement the way you want to, I'll spend my retirement the way I want to.

In telling the story of Joseph, it takes up the final quarter of the first book of the Bible.

The book of Genesis begins with the creation of all things and ends with the death of Joseph.

According to the Bible, the story of of Joseph is the last story of all the first stories.

In this sense, it's unique but becomes a paradigm for many of the stories that follow.

Jeff, two weeks ago, taught of how it reenacts already the story of Adam in the garden.

Where Adam failed in matters of obedience and integrity, Joseph succeeds.

Joseph is the first story of what integrity looks like east of Eden.

The story of young Joseph is a model for our youth.

Last week, Elizabeth taught us how this story is like the greatest story, the life of Christ.

Joseph's pit to palace, Christ's death to resurrection.

And Elizabeth beautifully shared with us how the Joseph story is her story, from her youthful wondering and wandering to being

assured of the goodness and guidance I hope to persuade you that the Joseph story is the story of

all the people of God, each of us individually and all of us together, in every century and in every place.

This last story of the beginnings is the first story of all that follows.

It's the story of life and ministry in exile.

I feel a need to warn you of something about Joseph at this sermon's beginning, maybe even apologize for it.

Perhaps you, like I, were raised on the Joseph story as exemplary of godliness from beginning to end.

"Be like Joseph" ended every Sunday school lesson I had on him.

Yet the Bible tells us this Joseph story in such detail and at such great length that it might serve as a cautionary cautionary tale as well.

There is a "do not be like Joseph" in the Bible and in the sermon.

I know right now some of you are looking at me as if I just told you there's no Santa.

But I encourage you to listen to the end.

Joseph's last move is perfect, perfectly perfect.

It's one of my favorites in the whole Bible.

His own life becomes a cautionary primary tale for him.

He learns, he repents, he changes, he finishes strong.

The story of Joseph is told 2 more times in the Bible in near complete similarity— Daniel and Esther.

The heroes are new, yeah, and they're in faraway places and over 1,000 years later than Joseph.

Yet the circumstances and challenges of their lives are so parallel to Joseph's, that reading their stories is like hearing the story of Joseph told 3

times.

Jewish parents have told these stories to the children in their home for 2.5 millennia now.

Christian parents, including mine, probably yours, for 2,000 years now.

My mother's favorite story in the Bible is Esther's.

It was the story of her life, she's sure of it.

It was the story which she referenced more most often when teaching me.

These three stories are among the most repeated stories in the world.

Each of the three heroes—Joseph, Daniel, Esther—is a story told of a youth far from home—Egypt, Babylon,

Persia—who will never get home.

They all have modest beginnings.

Joseph is enslaved when a boy, imprisoned as a young man.

Daniel is captured and taken to Babylon and put into service as a youth.

Esther is a village girl, an unwelcome foreigner in a hostile environment.

All three have plots against them to take their lives.

All three because foreigners in a foreign land, people of God among a people hostile to the people of God.

That's universal.

Then because of their acts of competence and usefulness, in incidents showing remarkable bravery and wisdom, with

decisions based on clarity of mission and identity in God.

After affirming their individual identity as the people of God, they are promoted, each of them, to the highest offices of the land.

They finish their days at the right hand of power—Joseph with Pharaoh, Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar, Esther with Xerxes.

These are the greatest powers of their generation: Egypt, Babylon, Persia.

In all three stories, unpredictably and stunningly, our three heroes become the second most powerful person in the world of their generation.

No wonder hopeful parents retell these stories to their children.

I told them to my three with hope.

My hope has not been disappointed.

These are stories not just of human heroes, of course, but of God.

So of course there's pattern and power in them.

The reversal of fortune is flabbergasting.

This is God's providence on dramatic display.

We learn today's circumstances are not final.

God's purposes are ultimate.

Let's consider the story of Joseph first.

At the beginning of today's chapter, Joseph is imprisoned.

imprisoned.

Say the word twice.

It's a double defeat and desperation, though his one reasonable hope for release has recently failed.

The cupbearer, a former fellow prisoner, with Joseph's help has been restored to royal service.

Though grateful in having heard Joseph's plea to be remembered, he has forgotten his faithful prison helper.

He remembered not Joseph.

the Bible sadly says.

The next book of the Bible, Exodus, will introduce the slavery of the people of God at its start with

Pharaoh who remembered not Joseph.

When we read this, think of the thief dying on the cross who with his last breath, in his final desperate hope, says to the

Savior, Remember Remember me when you come into your kingdom.

The cupbearer at the center of the kingdom very late remembers Joseph.

We'd lost hope of it.

At the end of this chapter, Joseph is the most powerful man of his time, second only to a very grateful Pharaoh.

Most of what he did up to this chapter, our Sunday school teachers rightly told us, was good and godly.

He trusted God, he fled sin, he was useful to all of all about him.

Yeah, we may need to forgive him blurting out his self-serving dreams a little too often, and in his youth probably gloating over his brothers.

Yeah, yeah.

But after his unforgivable treatment at their hands, we're no longer going to hold him reliable for further accusation.

The boy is gifted.

It is his usefulness that strikes us.

His father was the first to identify his gifts, placed him above his brothers, all older.

Potiphar, his master, recognizing the same gifts, places him in charge of his large estate.

The warden of the prison sees the same gifts and promoted him similarly.

Joseph does well wherever.

The gifts are of God, and Joseph is persistent and excellent in the use of them.

The boy just keeps on going.

My Father, wondering sometimes if I I had enough get-up-and-go, would quote Churchill to me: "If you find yourself going through hell,

keep going."

My mother, seeing that there was a quit-too-soon in me, quoted the Apostle Paul to me: "Do not grow weary

in well-doing."

Far, far away from father and mother, he will never again see his mother or live again in his His childhood home,

alienated from his brothers, brothers which betrayed him, beat him up, threw him in a pit, left him for dead, sold him as a slave, falsely

accused of attempted rape, disbelieved by the one man who had trusted him, tossed into another pit, this time a state prison, probably

a place for political prisoners.

He is now forgotten there by the only living friend he has in Egypt.

Rather than giving continued exemplary service to others in the pit, if this were my my story, the word pouting would appear

prominently.

My heroes: Eric Liddell, the Olympian, Chariots of Fire fame, who as a missionary to China,

while sacrificially serving others with his gifts, dies in a Japanese World War II prison camp of a brain tumor,

exasperated by malnourishment and overwork.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor pastor and writer, is executed in a German World War II concentration camp while

sacrificially serving others there to the end.

They were told the Joseph story in their youth.

Young Joseph is heroic.

Tell it to your children.

Live it as an adult.

But it's the adult Joseph who causes us some pause.

When Joseph interprets dreams, he reads dreamers.

I think part of Joseph's gift is knowing people uncannily.

He reads the will to prosperity in the cupbearer.

He read the surrender to adversity in the baker.

He now reads the fear and need of Pharaoh, a very flawed Pharaoh, a pagan, prideful Pharaoh, self-serving, sacrificing

others to his own whims and wants.

Pharaoh.

This is what pharaohs do.

The Bible's not impressed with pharaohs.

Joseph reads Pharaoh when interpreting his dreams.

Again, he's analyzing the dreamer.

Freud knew this of Joseph and wrote of it.

And he plays into the flaw, all of its pride and self-centeredness and brutality.

Sadly, disappointingly, Joseph plays to the evil in Pharaoh.

The plan is to sell food to the people of Egypt for a price in the lean years, food Pharaoh would confiscate without price in the fat

years, then sell it back to the growers.

This enriches Pharaoh, this impoverishes his people.

Welcome to ancient government practice.

First, the people paid for the food with money.

The Bible The Bible tells us when the money ran out, the next year Joseph said, "Well, then give me your livestock."

When the livestock was gone, the next year they said, "We have nothing left to give but ourselves and our land."

Well, "Bondage to Pharaoh is better than death," they said.

So the Bible says Joseph bought all the land in Pharaoh— all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh.

And the Bible says Joseph reduced the people to servitude.

of Egypt to the other.

This is still enforced today, the Bible says, when this story was written.

Nothing says slavery quicker in the Bible than Egypt and Pharaoh.

Here in Joseph's hand, with Joseph's plan, is its enhancement, if not its establishment.

This is the part of the story that is meant to trouble us.

deeply.

You do not need to read Tel Aviv political science professors like I do to become convinced of this.

Just read the story of Joseph.

The grandest story in the Hebrew Scriptures is God's miraculous deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt.

Joseph had conspired with Pharaoh in its promotion.

A later Pharaoh will need to drown to get rid of it.

Be troubled.

What has happened here?

We rightly exalt in the early story of young Joseph in Egypt.

We now rightly lament the latter story of older Joseph in Egypt.

We are troubled.

The trouble is, after the while, Joseph is in Egypt,

then Egypt is in Joseph.

The self-serving, prideful Pharaoh has found his mirror in Joseph.

He bribes him with power and position and prosperity.

The boy who dreamed of everyone bowing to him has willingly partnered with the king who thinks all by right should bow bow to him.

The two are a pair.

Joseph has out-Egypted the Egyptians.

Consider further.

Next in the story, as just read by Greta, Joseph takes on an Egyptian name, marries an Egyptian, becomes a

member of an Egyptian priestly family, buying in therefore to their religion, and names his children with Egyptian names.

The first, the name The name of his firstborn is May I Forget My Father's Household.

The name of his second is May I Relish the Land I Now Live In.

Through adversity, Joseph is pitch perfect.

In prosperity,

he fails miserably.

I was raised with this, and there's a great wisdom in it.

It's helped me.

Don't doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light.

Fair enough.

May I offer:

don't doubt in the light

what God has shown you in the dark.

Joseph saw it

in the dark of the pits into which he was thrown.

He lost sight of it

in the light of Pharaoh's palace.

The words Joseph in Egypt in the reading Greta just offered to us are together in almost every sentence that follows.

They are identified with each other brother now.

They're almost interchangeable.

Most tellingly, when his brothers come to Egypt and meet him, they do not recognize him.

Not once in the first meeting, not in the second meeting, not in the third meeting.

It's their brother.

Yeah, he shaved.

No males in the ancient Near East shave except Egyptians.

Yeah, he probably wore makeup.

Elite Egyptians men did often.

Yeah, and he was speaking Egyptian.

But how clean-shaven can one be, and how much eyeliner can one put on, and how effectively can you change your

voice that in private company, 3 separate times, not one of your 10 brothers recognize you?

You're a different person now.

You wanted to be.

The Bible wants us to know the very sad truth.

Joseph no longer identifies himself as is Hebrew, in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, his father.

Joseph thinks he is zephanath-paneah, a prime minister and a man created by Pharaoh.

His job description, his advantage, his privilege has become his identity.

The story of Joseph in Egypt has now become the story of Egypt and Joseph.

Contrast this with Daniel and Esther, also also youths in royal service in foreign lands and poised next to the ruling king.

Daniel, in direct violation of a newly dictated law meant to entrap him, prays, windows open for all the world to see,

3 times a day facing Jerusalem where reside the Hebrew people.

Daniel belongs to God.

Let the whole world know.

No one mistakes him for a Babylonian.

Saved by God in the lion's den, he is hero hero to us.

Hero for having identified as one of the people of God no matter the consequences.

The 3 Hebrew children, friends of Daniel, resist the assimilation from the beginning by refusing to eat the king's meat while committing to

work in the king's service.

Esther 2, at the right moment, a heroic moment, when the whole empire is poised to slaughter the Hebrews, announces she is Hebrew.

This is the brave this moment in the Scriptures.

A member of the people of God, belonging to God.

No one mistakes her for a Persian now.

In doing so, she saves all the people of God that day.

2,500 years later, the Jewish people gladly celebrate her heroism and God's deliverance.

See the contrast?

Daniel and Esther publicly identify as the people of God.

A child of God belonging to God, Joseph assimilates.

No one knows his identity.

Has he himself forgotten?

But God is good.

With the appearance of his brothers, he eventually— takes a while— breaks down, reveals his identity to

them, and eventually to his staff, family, and Pharaoh.

With the appearance of his elderly father Jacob, he reestablishes his Hebrew ways and means.

God is good.

At the end of his life, the reigning prime minister of Egypt, Joseph, long the second most powerful man in the

world, his name and the word Egypt having become identified, makes his heirs promise that he

will not be buried in Egypt.

Egypt, but in the land God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

During the Exodus from Egypt, 400 years later, crossing the parted Red Sea, the

people of God carry the bones of Joseph home.

Joseph leaves Egypt.

Egypt has left Joseph.

And that's the point of the sermon.

It's not an easy thing to do.

It requires heroism.

I think we are, as Peter says, sojourners, temporary residents here.

Our citizenship is in heaven.

We have great responsibilities here, to be sure.

Ask Joseph, Daniel, Esther, prime minister, chief civil servant, queen— never number one.

one, two— never one, often two— always to be in service of another.

Ask the prophet Jeremiah: seek the peace and prosperity of the city, he preaches.

This one, this one for Jeremiah was Babylon.

Really?

That's the city I'm supposed to help out?

Pray for the earthly city, the nation, and the empire.

Whatever city you're in, ask the Apostle Paul: pray for the king, submit to authority, ask the Savior, render unto Caesar the things that

belong to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God.

To be clear, time and toil, grit and gifts may be given to the king,

but we do not give ourselves.

We belong to God.

Choose to serve in whatever career.

Teach in the schools, practice law in the courts, invent in the labs, heal in the hospitals, join the Navy, run for election, elected office, accept the appointment, go to

seminary.

Apparently they admit just anyone.

Be a skilled worker, be a leader of workers, work.

My dad approves of that statement.

Serve well, gladly, with every gift God gives you.

Persist, pursue excellence.

Choose to serve the city, in the city of God's choosing for you, and by doing so, serve its people and your God,

but do not become the city.

Your citizenship is not there.

Do not assimilate to it.

Do not identify with it or as it.

This is a long lesson.

Every day you make decisions about it.

It may take a lifetime for any of us to perfect the learning of it.

Joseph is early in the history of the people of God.

We gotta— Give them that.

Daniel and Esther, much later.

In the early years, the pagan gods still influenced the Hebrews.

Sometimes they yearned to go back to Egypt.

Faith and faithfulness were new and still being formed.

In the latter years, like with Daniel and Esther, monotheism is established, the law guides, faith and faithfulness are better formed.

Daniel and Esther have Joseph as a cautionary tale.

It helps them.

It helps us now.

It is difficult to avoid Joseph's error when young and on our way up.

We grasp when faith and faithfulness are long known and practiced.

We can better discern and devote ourselves as the people of God.

The promise of the City of God becomes more powerful the closer we get to it.

Age has some spiritual benefits.

So in the meantime,

tell these stories to your children.

Tell them they are the people of God.

To him and him alone do they belong.

Retell these stories to yourself and each other.

You are the people of God.

We belong to God.

Get into Egypt wholeheartedly.

Get Egypt out of your heart.

Every story in Genesis reminds us that we are east of Eden.

Egypt is not the garden, it's not home.

Another awaits.

We so Sojourn toward it.

Live your life in service to that city and those resident there.

Identify as a resident of another city, which, as the Bible said, is not made with human hands, whose

builder and architect is God.

You will enter it when all the people of God are carried home.

Let us pray.

Teach us

neither to doubt in the dark what we have seen in the light,

or in the light what we have seen in the dark.

Give us this

that we know

that we belong to you

and seek no other.