We noted yesterday that ‘the LORD was with Joseph’ and as the account unfolds it is apparent that this is no throwaway comment.
He is confined to prison on false charges for his walk and service were honourable in every way but in prison also the LORD was with him. Not only was he with him but he showed him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes of the prison warder. The result? He come to be in charge of all the prisoners and as with Potiphar the warder paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care because the LORD was with him and gave him success in whatever he did. 39.21-23
Joseph as we recall had been a dreamer and he now has placed into his care two Egyptians who had had dreams and are in prison because they had offended Pharaoh. Joseph interprets their dreams with one good and one devastating outcome. Life and death. Then as the Cupbearer is released and restored to his position, having been asked to petition Pharaoh on his behalf we have a very blunt ending to the account. The chief cupbearer……forgot him leaving him with a further two years in prison.
I am reminded of the case of Romanian Pastor Richard Wurmbrand who was kept in solitary confinement for fourteen years. Can it be said of him that ‘the LORD was with him’? Can it be said of you and I, that in all the trials of life that ‘he LORD was with them’? It surely can!
From our time bound perspective we may question these affirmative statements. When perhaps our hopes are dashed as Joseph’s were, we may begin to doubt but at such times we MUST resort to God’s unchanging Word. It is that Word that kept Richard Wurmbrand for those fourteen long years as he fed himself on it – from memory as he did not have a Bible!
The narrator of Genesis does not tell us how God made himself known to Joseph but Joseph clearly knew that the LORD was with him and he lived in very difficult circumstancesnover long periods of time, in the light of that truth.
May that be true to each one of us who know that the LORD is with us because we are ‘in Christ’ and may others see that we are different and seek us out when, like the two in that Egyptian prison, they are fearful and confused.