Genesis 39:1-41:16 ~ Matthew 12:46-13:23 ~ Psalm 17:1-15 ~ Proverbs 3:33-35
Today is January 19th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you today. Yep, for the next step forward. This will be our 19th step and 365 steps might seem like a lot of steps, but these steps go by fast. Here we are, already past the halfway point of our first month together. Look at all that has happened. Now we’re picking up the story of Joseph. Joseph’s story is not only a powerful, really powerful example in our own lives, but it is also going to show us how this one promise to this one man named Abraham actually started to take real shape and form.
So today, from the New International Version, Genesis chapter 39, verse 1 through chapter 41, verse 16.
Commentary
We have to talk about Joseph because Joseph’s story unfolds over time and we have a lot of detail in it and it is such a mirror of different seasons in our own lives and offers us quite a contrast. So the chances of any of us having experienced everything that Joseph experienced is pretty small. This kid went through quite a bit of things.
He’s 17 years old, he’s a young man, he’s really good looking, according to the Bible, built well and handsome. And he’s also the beloved son of his father’s old age. You’ll have to remember that he is the son of the beloved wife Rachel and for so long she wasn’t able to have children. In the end she was able to have two sons and died giving birth to one of them and his name is Benjamin. But Joseph is a beloved son of his father, so he treats him differently than the sons from these other women. So that brings some tension of its own and then Joseph starts having these dreams and starts telling his brothers about them. In these dreams they are bowing down to him, which does not go over well. You can imagine that if you grew up with siblings. If one of your siblings told you that “I had a dream that you will be bowing down to me,” and you’re a teenager during this time, yeah, that is not going to go over well. So it brings a lot of animosity. There is just a lot of family politics here.
So Jacob, whose name has been changed to Israel, sends one of his sons, one of the children of Israel to the other children of Israel, the only children of Israel that exist at this point. He is supposed to go check on the flocks, check on his brothers, see how everybody is doing. And the brothers decide to teach this dreamer, this teenager, this favored son a lesson and they talk about killing their own brother. What they end up doing is throwing him into a cistern. We see some different relationships inside the dynamics of the brothers. One of the brothers wants to save him. The other brothers want to kill him. Then they come up with this plan that they are going to sell him. So Joseph, a 17-year-old really good-looking young man who has been the star or favored son is human trafficked by his own family into slavery and ends up in Egypt.
We can stop right there and put ourselves in Joseph’s shoes and say that is not fair. And it is not fair, but we begin to see the posture of heart that Joseph has within him. He becomes the slave of Potiphar, a high-ranking official to the pharaoh, the captain of the guard, so a military man, a guy who knows his way around a sword, a guy probably to be feared. But he is sold to this guy, but quickly Joseph becomes in charge of the whole house of Potiphar. Joseph could have been constantly saying this is not fair. I’m a Hebrew. I was stolen. I was marketed by my own family. I don’t belong to be a slave. I was born free. He doesn’t go into all that. He just sets about the work that is put before him while trusting in God and just doing well and he becomes favored in that position. But Potiphar’s wife takes notice of this well-built, good-looking young man and wants to make him her toy.
Every time we get to this part I’m like this is a 17-year-old kid. Maybe he’s a little older now. Maybe he’s 18. Maybe he’s 19 years old. So for him to resist Potiphar’s wife, that’s a pretty big feat. Pretty tough to resist that when you’ve got a woman throwing herself at you and you’re in this particular age. But he uses common sense and says the facts. “I am in charge of everything.” Like, “I essentially have a lot of freedom that was taken away from me and you’re the only thing off-limits to me. I can’t.”
Of course, what happens is he flees from her and she keeps his cloak and uses it to incriminate him which lands him in prison. So he could be sitting in a cell in a dungeon saying, “Wait a minute, this is not fair at all. I was the favored, favorite son of my father. I have been made a slave and it’s not fair and now I am in prison for doing the right thing.” At every turn, Joseph is doing the right thing and it is only making it worse. Have you ever been in a situation like that? Where it is like hard to stand your ground and do the right thing and just take it?
What we see in Joseph is a very long view. He has remarkable ability to see a bigger picture and that what is happening right now is not the end of the story. He doesn’t know the end of the story, but he has a trust in the God of his father and recognizes this as his only hope. So in short order he becomes basically in charge of the prison. We went through these stories of the baker and the cupbearer and the dreams. The dreams are interpreted right. The baker is executed. The cupbearer is restored and completely forgets about Joseph for another couple of years. Another couple of years Joseph has to serve in that prison that he does not belong in because he did the right thing.
At the end of the reading today, we find that Pharaoh has a dream and Joseph is brought from the prison to stand before the king of Egypt. This story isn’t over yet. We won’t give it all away. We’ll read through it, but let’s at least pay attention to the fact that Joseph was doing the right thing and it only seemed to make things worse. Somehow Joseph was able to stay faithful and true to God and have a long view that there is more going on than it seems. This is not the last time we’ll see this theme emerge in the Bible. It is an important one. There is more going on in your life right now than it seems. When we box ourselves into the immediate, right now, then we continue to do this loop. We keep playing the same tape over and over and over, getting more and more and more bitter, which makes us start blaming God when that is the only hope we have.
Joseph didn’t deserve any of the things that happened to him, but wait until we see how he remembers all of this over the next couple days.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the gift of your word and all of the stories of our spiritual ancestors long ago because we find in their hearts our heart. We find in their circumstances our circumstances. They look a little different. We’re in different cultures and wearing different clothes, but the motivations and postures of heart, they are the same. We’ve been wondering about these things in our lives. We were trying to be true and trying to do the right thing, but it seems to only get worse. So we immediately feel like we’re being attacked and we start to fight that rather than just asking you “are you in this?” and “where are we going?” and resting in you. So we subtly try to fight off attacks and start blaming you for not showing up when we haven’t even asked, when we haven’t been the friend that we were talking about yesterday in the book of Proverbs, where we haven’t been the kind of person you can take into your confidence. We haven’t been trustworthy, yet when we look at Joseph we see a completely different posture. So Father, help us to understand there is more going on than we know about and if we will walk with you, we will have the grace that we need for this day. Come Holy Spirit, we pray. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian. I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports
Hello my DAB family. It is Mark S. from Sydney, Australia. Today is Thursday, I think the 11th of January. Look, I’m sorry I got interrupted in my last one. Look, I’ve got an urgent prayer request. I do want to wish you all a Happy New Year and I’m sorry that it’s not been a wonderful year for me, but I know with God’s help, not so much for me, for my son… He’s going downhill. He’s got such a hatred in his heart for his mother. He wants to destroy her life and no matter what I say to him, he is becoming more and more hatred in his heart. It’s grown totally out of proportion in his mind of what happened, probably due to some of the sin in the past, myself that caused some issues as well. I’ve tried to tell him that, but he won’t listen. He’s doing his best. He wants to destroy her life. I’m praying he won’t, but I’m in despair because I’ve tried to sit down. I’ve tried to talk to him and say that anger was killing him. He doesn’t care. He says as long as his mother suffers, he doesn’t care what happens to himself. He is just so full of hatred and anger. Family, please, please pray for Damon. He is in such a pit of hell at the moment. The devil has a strangle hold of him totally and I just need as many prayers as possible that Satan will leave him alone and that he will be in love with Jesus. He’s totally taken by Satan at the moment and it is sad to say. Please pray for me, family. Love you all. Bye.
Hey, good morning family. This is Cherry C., Cherry Pie. Hope everybody is well today. I just heard the prayer line. I heard, I think she said Anna, the 11-year-old girl that called about her grandmother and her grandmother passed. I want to tell you, Baby, I’ve got your back. You’re a little prayer warrior already. I’m saying look at her. You’re a little prayer warrior already, so I’m sure your grandmother was proud of you. I am just for you being bold and standing up for God and just calling in. Now I’m going to ask you guys for prayers. I’m still trying to get my house refinanced and right now everything is going through the process, so I’m asking you all to cover me and that this will be done and God fixes it for me where I can redo my loan for my home. You guys, you all be blessed. I love each and every one of you guys. Please stay encouraged. Every day you wake up you can reset. You can change what you don’t like. Just push that reset button. You don’t like what is going on in your life, hit reset. Start it all over. Write it down. Write it out. I love you guys so much. You have a glorious and wonderful day and you guys, I will see you. Or not see you. I want to see you guys. I want to see all you guys, but I will talk to you guys soon and it seems like I’m going to see you guys. I love you guys. You guys have a great day.
Good morning family. Today is January 15th. This is Sheila T. calling from Texas. I had a mighty visitation from the King of kings and I saw Brian’s mom being welcomed into heaven. Sorry guys. I’m emotional. I cried with joy. There is a lot of joy in heaven right now. She is no longer that woman with tubes. She is so beautiful. She has been introduced to other brothers who are already in heaven. There is so much celebration, guys. As we mourn, let us not mourn as the hopeless. Let us know that one of us has been received to heaven. God delights when he receives a soul that did right, so guys, let us purpose to walk this life on that narrow path that leads to eternal life. Don’t be swayed. Don’t look to the left or to the right. Look to Jesus, the perfecter of your faith. People, God wants you to pray for Brian’s family every day. He calls him my friend. Brian, you are God’s friend and guess what? You are Satan’s enemy. So family, pray every day for Brian. Pray for him. I come against the spirit of death over this family. I pray, O God, that you may fill this family with your joy, your love. Comfort them. Surround them with your mighty arms. Let them know how much you love them. And we too love them. Thank you Jesus for the mighty visitation. I love you guys. Bye.
Good morning all my Dabbers. This is Darryl from Depew. Today is the 12th day of January and I would like to reach out to little, I think her name was Anna, the little 11-year-old. What a sweetheart she is. What a believer in God and in Jesus she is. Oh my God, I just love this little girl. I could listen to her talk forever. But anyways, she said that her grandma has passed away, so may her family mourn the loss but may they have many memories of grandma. Anna, be blessed in the Lord and keep going strong the way you are. Love you, Honey. Bye.
Good morning everyone. This is Alicia from Kansas. Today is January 12th. Happy Thursday. Happy Friday Eve everybody. I know this will get played afterwards. Just wanted to say a couple of things. If you could please just pray for me. I’m trying to find balance with my children. As I’ve shared before unashamedly before my Lord, I’m the mother of five children who have five fathers and two of my children I have not met. Just trying to find balance and be the matriarch of my family as a godly woman, a godly single woman with just two of the children who were raised together. They are all adults, well, except for one. I just get plagued with self-pity and hurt feelings and get a little passive aggressive. Just prayer that God would give me guidance and direction. I just wanted to lift up Autumn today and say thank you Autumn for calling and I’m sorry for your grandmother’s passing. I’m so grateful that your family is moving and that prayers are being answered. You are a precious, beautiful child. I’m so proud of you and I’m sure your parents are and the Lord is just celebrating you. When I was your age, I was in the foster system and already using drugs, so you keep close to the Lord, Sweetheart. Keep doing what you’re doing. We’re all so happy for you and happy that you’re grandma is rejoicing with Jesus. Alright, everybody. Have a great day today. Oh, and Autumn, I love Victorious Soldier’s prayers too. Take care all. Bye-bye.
Hi, this Dr. Stone from the Cleveland, OH area calling for Brian. Just to let you know that I’m praying for you and pass on my condolences to you and to your family after the loss of your mother. As I said on the Facebook page, my heart breaks with you and your family, but my heart also rejoices for your mother who moved fully into the presence of God. I’m sure she is up there with Jesus, saying “Brian, I love you and I’ll be here waiting for you.” Thank you. And you’re in my prayers.
Hello Daily Audio Bible viewers. This is Faith Butterfly from South Africa. I just wanted to give a shout-out to a lady called Biola from Maryland. She prayed for me three years ago for my daughter, Cora and I, and I wanted to let her know that we are doing well. I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible for three years now and we live in Central South Africa. There are a few other friends who I’ve introduced to the Daily Audio Bible and we are listening to it together. My prayer request is just to pray that I will be in the center of God’s will as I seek him and that he will direct my path in important decisions I need to make. Thank you. Bye.
Good morning Dabbers. I’m a burning bush that will not be devoured for the glory of our Lord and King. Today I’m calling for the young lady who called. Her name is Autumn. I believe she is Inez’s granddaughter from Arizona. This 11-year-old called. I’m so sorry, I didn’t hear your first request but it is probably because I wasn’t up-to-date on all the calls by the end of the year, but I am praying for you and your family. I prayed for you when I listened to your request and I want you to know you are totally covered. I am very impressed and I admire your spiritual growth at 11 years old. I pray that God will continue to sustain what he has started in your life. Praise God for your family being reunited. I pray that this will be a good transition for you and your family. God bless you. I love you and hope you call in again. God bless.