If you grew up in church like me, you probably came across a sermon that says something like “from the pit to the palace, God is about to promote you”. And that preacher probably riled up the whole congregation into thinking that God was some genie in a bottle that was going to make all your wishes come true. But if we take the time to read from Genesis Chapter 37 up until the end to chapter 50, we then realize that the story of Joseph is a story of so much pain and strife; so much detours and unfair encounters. We are given the account of a young boy who has a vision from the Lord in his very young years. I believe he was about 17 years old and he shares his dream with his already dysfunctional family and instead of them uplifting him; they do everything to kill the dream.

They even think of killing him, but instead they decide to send him into a life of servitude in a foreign country. The very people that was supposed to protect him, the very people who was supposed to love on him were the ones selling him into slavery. And when we look at it from a modern perspective, we understand what dysfunctional families are and while we might be even tempted to judge harshly his brothers, we have to look at the fact that his brothers have existed way before him, but instead when he was born because he was a love child, he was given preferential treatment. Because of this, his brothers felt jaded. I am not excusing their behavior, but I could understand how that can happen in the family dynamic. I am sure some of us know a thing or two about that.

We might not be a Joseph. We might be one of his brothers. We might live in a place where we feel like we have given all to our parents, but they choose our siblings over us. So going back to now selling him into slavery and finding himself in a place where he had to fend for himself in a different culture and I believe in different language, he excels really well in the house that he is enslaved in because even when he was in a house of bondage the favor of the Lord was on him. I feel like that is a word for someone as well. You might be feeling like you were in a house of bondage. You might feel like God has called you to better, but instead you find yourself seated in a job maybe that doesn’t pay well, but you don’t have the possibility to quit so that you can actually follow what you think God has put on your heart.

But, the favor of the Lord is on you and you excel at everything that you do and likewise this young man is given a test where the mistress of the house keep tempting him into sleeping with her, but he refuses. In refusing to do so, she lies on him and he finds himself in prison and even when he is in prison, he still has the favor of the Lord that he actually is promoted as an overseer of sorts and as God will have it, people call it fate, but as the purposes of God will have it, he meets two servants of Pharaoh who had been imprisoned.

He sees them one fateful morning with a sad look on their faces and I think that is the part of the story that really touches me, is that he still had a heart that would look at someone else’s else pain and care, to look beyond himself and still want to serve. He still had empathy for the men who woke up feeling sad. So then they tell him about their dreams and because he had the gift of interpreting dreams, the cup bearer and I believe another servant,  then tells him about his dream and he interprets their respective dreams and gives them a vision for the future and he lets the cup bearer know because the cup bearer was to survive and the other one was to be executed by the Pharaoh.

He tells him, listen I am in prison but I am innocent please once you get back to your job, please remember me and put in a good word with Pharaoh so that I can get out of here. But the Bible tells us that the guy forgets about him and two years pass and then Pharaoh has a dream, a dream that none of his sorcerers or astrologers can interpret.

Absolutely no one in the kingdom can interpret it. So this is where the appointing time has come to pass. After all those two years of him sitting, idly I believe in the prison, knowing he is innocent, knowing God had given him a dream, knowing all that he has on his heart but he had to sit still in all those years and that is again a word for someone and it is specifically a word for me if I am being honest with you. I have sat so many years wondering if I really heard right from God and living in these places of “almosts” not so much as truly embracing what I believe God has put on my heart.

So then he is summoned by the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh tells him about his dream and in all humility and in all understanding Joseph tells him that the Lord of Heaven reveals such dreams and that he had given him a dream for the future to save people from famine. So there and there a man who had been imprisoned, who had been brutally handled most of his life at this point is giving the Pharaoh and you have to remember the Pharaoh was like a god in Egyptian civilization.