Keith and Chad discuss the life of Joseph, pull practical applications, and highlight some of the ways Joseph's story shadows Jesus.
Intro (Keith): Welcome to the Kanakuk Institute Podcast, where we continue to equip leaders with biblical skills for a lifetime of ministry.
Chad (00:13): And welcome back into the Kanakuk Institute Podcast, thank you as always for joining us. Chad Hampsch here with Keith Chancey, and we are taking some time to look at these amazing stories from the Old testament and to make sure we’re understanding them but also seeing that God is doing something through these stories, and we have talked the last several weeks if you haven’t’ been with us about an upper story and a lower story. Lower story is the practical application we get from God’s word, but often we miss what’s called the upper story and that’s where God is doing something, whether that be in the nation of Israel, or in his larger plan to redeem mankind through the person of Jesus. And so most of these stories that we’re looking at have a direct point specifically to the person of Jesus. And so this week, Keith, we’re going to talk about a favorite. And it’s an easy one to talk about, Joseph.
Keith (01:08): I love this guy, and you know, Joseph’s so much fun, because, you know, Chad, it’s been really fund because we’re looking at these unlikely heroes. You know, David, Joshua, Joseph. These are guys that, you know, these are your average Joe’s. Unless, you know David. (yeah, Jo’s). Unless you’re like David and you’re a man after God’s own heart. But even in that, what you see is, you go, “Man, God prepared us for a work greater than ourselves.” And I love to think about that, you know for all of you out there in the listening audience, how that, you know, sometimes you see yourself as insignificant. You see yourself as, you know what God could never use me because I don’t have as many gifts as these guys have? Really? Because last I checked, you’re having to deal with all the same things these guys did. God’s bringing you to the land, you understand the law, he’s going to create this miracle, are you going to go to the other side, are you going to focus on the problems, are you going to focus on the solutions? Are you going to go fight the giants out there? I mean, because people are watching you, and they want your life to be that guy of a symbol of what Christianity is. And so today we’re going to look at another guy named Joseph, that I promise you, this story just blows me away, because I don’t know if I could have done it like this, you know?
Chad (02:20): So, before we get into upper story lower story, just remind us of what the story is. Who is Joseph? What happens?
Keith (02:27): Joseph is a young man that has a bunch of brothers, and he is a, he has a dream, and God says, puts him into a sleep, and he has this little dream, and he starts dreaming that his brothers are like wheat, they’re going to bow down to him, and.
Chad (02:43): Never popular to tell your big brother.
Keith (02:44): He’s going to rise up above all the others, and now he wakes up, and he tells his brothers, “Hey I had this dream.” And they go, “We don’t like you. We hate you.” And they conspire to kill him. And I’m like, doesn’t that just sound like brothers in this world? That when one of the brothers has pride and he begins to talk about himself and how great he is, nobody likes that, everybody’s frustrated. So there’s kind of a good story right there for all of us, you know to see others more important than ourself as Philippians 2 tells us. But you know, and God is opposed to the proud but he gives grace to the humble. Joseph, I don’t know if he even knew that though. You know, because he just got a picture of God, and he’s going, “Wow.”
Chad (03:25): Almost like he shared the story in innocence, and, but it was received like it was coming out of a place of pride.
Keith (03:30): It absolutely was. And so his brothers, you know, and once again, I don’t question his brothers’ love for him, but at that moment, he was the favored child. His daddy gave him the coat of many colors, we’ve always heard that.
Chad (03:42): Treated differently.
Keith (03:44): Treated differently. You know, he’s the favored child. And there are favored children. They shouldn’t be, but sometimes, a sweeter kid does get more attention from the family, and moms and dads, we need to be very careful of that. Because kids do understand that when we treat others with more kindness or love or favoritism, they get it. And they’re going to turn out exactly like we make them to be sometimes. And so, here’s Joseph. And he’s that guy that’s out there, and his brothers don’t like him that much. They get him to go along with them, and then they create a pit, they make him fall into the pit. And then they get an animal, they kill an animal, they get his clothes all bloody. They sell him off to a tribe going off to Egypt, and here’s, and they give the clothes to dad and say, “Your son died today.” I mean I just can’t imagine that you in your right mind would say that’s ok.
Chad (04:45): Nothing more cruel you could really do to a Father than fake a kid’s death.
Keith (04:50): And here’s Joseph. He’s now in a caravan. He’s gone off to be, he’s a slave. And there’s his brothers, and they’re freed of their brother by a lie. A vicious lie. And here’s a dad weeping and mourning the death of his favored child, and you as the brothers think that that’s going to be ok. It’s amazing how our brains, you know, Chad, you and I often say, we say, the lie that we believe is the very thing that holds us back from God. And they believed that by getting rid of their brother, they were going to be ok. And, you know what, the answer to that was, they were. Because God’s about to do something that’s even greater.. He’s going to bring that brother back to life that they never dreamed imaginable. Because they never thought, “Good riddance brother.” And so here’s Joseph. He goes into slavery, but because of his faithfulness, he gets elevated to a position within the king’s kingdom.
Chad (05:49): Yeah, so, little lower story lesson there, right?
Keith (05:52): And you go, “Wow, because he was faithful in the little things, God gave him much.”
Chad (05:55): God elevated, not on his timing, but God’s timing.
Keith (05:58): To the second in command of all the kingdom.
Chad (06:01): And not just any kingdom. Egypt.
Keith (06:05): Which at that time was the world power. And so here’s Joseph, and he’s just doing his thing and doing this and minding his own business, and being a very faithful worker, an employee of the king that would never do anything wrong. And the king’s wife begins to get the eyes for Joseph. And one day, she grabs Joseph after she says, “Will you, you know, have relations with me.” And she grabs his cloak and pulls it off and he runs off streaking. And you’re kind of like, “Oh my gosh.” I can’t imagine, but I’m so thankful that Joseph did do that, because if he’d of stayed there, he would have done something incredibly more wrong. He takes off, he’s done nothing wrong, but she goes to her husband and says that he was trying to make relations with her.
Chad (06:50): Husband has no choice.
Keith (06:51): Husband doesn’t have a choice, throws him into prison, and Joseph has done nothing wrong, and now he’s in prison suffering. So if you’re Joseph, you’ve got to be going, “Ok?”
Chad (07:00): Two strikes, right?
Keith (07:04): God, we’ve got to have a conversation here. You’ve now allowed me to be, you gave me this dream. And now I was sold into slavery. Now I was second in command. And now I’m in prison.
Chad (07:16): Yeah, every time something good happens, I’m back down on my face.
Keith (07:21): Yeah, and so here’s Joseph. And here he is in prison, and he begins to add these, people begin to have these dreams, and long story short, Joseph interprets these dreams, and finally, one dream that the king needed interpreted, Joseph interprets, he gets out of prison, and is once again raised up in authority because there was a famine of the land, and Joseph does what nobody else could have done. He rescues the land by getting all the storage containers and gets everybody ready for this famine that comes into the world, and Joseph saves everybody. I mean, you’re going, “Dude it just can’t get any better than that.” And because he does that, everybody had to come from all the other cities and countries, and they had to come there to Egypt to get their food, and guess who’s in charge, Joseph. And guess who comes to get their food? Joseph’s brothers.
Chad (08:14): And so that really brings this like, to the very pinnacle of the lower story, right? So, Joseph’s in command, brothers come from what will be Israel. It’s Canaan at the time, and they meet face to face. Joseph knows who they are, brothers don’t know who he is. Walk us through what happens?
Keith (08:34): Oh my, can you imagine that? Because, being Joseph and seeing your brothers, I have this sneaky feeling that he always knew they would come, and I think I was kind of ready. And I’m sure in that moment that he was thinking they would come, I think he was kind of going, “You know what? I’m going to show them. Look at the position I’ve been given. And I’m going to put you guys in a dungeon where you’re going to be beheaded and I’m going to show you.” But we see the opposite of that.
Chad (08:58): Yeah, God does what only he can do for softening people’s hearts.
Keith (09:05): God softened Joseph’s heart, and here they are, long story short, that they come to him and Joseph says, “Hey it’s me. Your brother.” And there’s weeping, there’s embracing. And yet Joseph loved them. Oh my gosh, Chad, I just, it makes me want to cry because I think when my dad left when I was young, and a man led me to Christ named Tommy Maxwell, the first thing he talked to me about was forgiveness. I had a misunderstanding of who God was. And when he helped me understand God and he helped me understand the nature of man that we were all sinners, and that God forgave me, it blessed me when he said, “Chancey, God forgave you, now forgive your dad.” And Chad, I’m going to tell you something, I didn’t want to forgive my dad, because my dad had been abusive, he hurt me.
Chad (09:58): Yeah there’s a lot of pain.
Keith (10:00): A lot of pain. But he said, “Listen to me Chancey, you’re being held hostage by what your dad did.”
Chad (10:08): Yeah, it’s not affecting him, it’s affecting you.”
Keith (10:10): He doesn’t even know. “But you are trying to wish vengeance upon him.” I’ll never forget a passage that was so good to me found in Romans 12:19 “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay says the Lord.’” You know Chad, what happened for me is that vengeance, and I think Joseph understood it, vengeance is the lords’ not ours to give. And when we free people from that, it makes us healthy, it removes the lines from the lines from the crow’s feet on your eyes. Your face relaxes, your heart becomes joyful. And all of a sudden, you’re renewed in a way you could never believe before. And I really believe, that’s what Joseph looked like at that moment.
Chad (10:53): It reminds me of the passage, “Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.” Because we have been forgiven, there is a responsibility to pass that along. So let’s jump up to upper story. There’s a lot there on forgiveness. So much, I encourage you, go back and spend some time in the book of Genesis. What’s going on here with Israel? And with the gentile nations? Because there’s something really big happening at an upper story level.
Keith (11:21): Well, you know, Chad, just the heart. The heart of man has become exceedingly wicked, and they just don’t see, you know, God the way they need to see him. And as a result, they’re doing things in their own. They’re not trusting God, and they’ve se tup all these idols and things that are so against God, that there’s no way they can see God. And so if I was God, I would be jealous, and I would just wipe out everybody. But God doesn’t do that. His forgiveness for us is always been there, and it’s always been one of such grace, such mercy, we don’t get what we deserve, and all he wants is for us to ask forgiveness of our sin, and he will restore the land and the people.
Chad (12:07): Yeah, one of my probably all time favorite shadows is Joseph. And, you know, when you say the story out loud, you just, it drips of Jesus, right? He’s beloved of his father, but his brothers hate him, who are his brothers? The nation of Israel, right? He’s hated by his Jewish brothers, much like Jesus was. They think he’s dead, he’s not dead, he’s actually down with the Gentiles. And what’s he giving the Gentiles? He’s giving them bread, which in the New Testament represents life. Right? So this man is giving life to the Gentiles, but the end of the story. The Jews are now grafted in together with the Gentiles under this one man. What a perfect picture of what Jesus has done and continues to do, to take Jew and Gentile under the cross of Jesus Christ, and at the end of the story, they will be perfectly united under the blood of Jesus Christ, and he will be brought ultimate glory.
Keith (13:00): And you know, Chad, something that’s so good there is that God has no favor of any man. You know, he loves everybody. I think of that song growing up, Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world. And if we could see life that way, and see everybody as God’s children, and see the way God sees us all, he doesn’t want anyone to perish. I love that thought that he wishes that all would be saved. And he loves us, just like he loved Joseph, and just like he restored the brothers with him. We need to see that restoration, and it only comes through Jesus Christ. And so the foreshadowing is Christ is the one that reconciles everyone unto himself. What a beautiful picture of that?
Chad (13:54): And I just say, for our listening audience, know that, that we are praying that restoration for that forgiveness in your family, and our encouragement would be if there’s a broken relationship, don’t wait another day. It’s not worth holding on to.
Keith (14:10): And Chad, you know, I really, in my dad’s situation, I was allowed to forgive my dad. Many years later, my dad came back, and when he came back in, because I forgave my dad, I was allowed to restore him into my home, and led my Dad to Christ. And he came to know Jesus. Jesus Christ, his forgiveness heals deep, deep wounds.
Chad (14:33): Wounds that we could never allow to be healed on our own.
Keith (14:40): And the pain that so many of you in the audience feel. I had a kid come to me just last night and he said, “Chancey, when you shared that little bit of a story with me, it changed everything about my life.” He said, “I have hated my dad and my mom, and all of a sudden I have been reconciled.” And he says, “I am going to start loving them and praying for their salvation.” And he said, “That’s what I needed.” He said, “Why does nobody teach that?” Well. Lot of people have never experienced it, so they don’t know how to teach it.
Chad (15:04): Well that’s a great encouragement for our listening audience. Our word for you today is take action. Don’t sit back, don’t hold on. Reminder that God is in control, just like he was with Joseph, and he can bring forgiveness out of ashes, and when does, he brings about new life.
Keith (15:22): What a blessing.
Chad (15:23): Thanks for joining us again on the Kanakuk Institute Podcast. We’ll see you next time.
Keith (15:25): God bless.