Genesis 39:2 2 (NKJV) The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.
The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man.
Those words can be deceiving if we fail to understand the whole story.
Not that Joseph wasn’t successful; he was. But understanding the context in which these words were spoken is critical if we are to grasp the depth of the statement.
If we look up the word “successful” we would see that some synonyms for this word would be victorious, triumphant, fortunate.
Knowing that, if we look at the big picture of Joseph’s life, we would be unlikely to consider him triumphant or victorious.
He was betrayed by his brothers, who tossed him into a pit and sold him to a slave trader.
Those same brothers told their father that he was dead, killed by a wild animal.
He was then taken to a foreign land where he was subsequently sold by the slave traders to Potiphar, an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh.
Joseph had gone from being the highly favored son of Jacob, to being sold as a slave by his brothers who despised him. Then transported to a foreign land, where he was now working for an Egyptian master.
He was a slave, plain and simple.
If we were to look at Joseph’s situation at this point in his life, would we really consider him to be successful?
In the natural sense, there was no success to be found.
In the natural sense, his life would have been seen as miserable.
And in the natural sense, Joseph had suffered blows that gave him good reason to live out his years with hatred and bitterness in his heart toward his brothers, and toward the God who had allowed this to happen to him.
But what did Joseph do? How did he handle this seemingly tragic turn of events?
Please join us tomorrow as we look deeper into Joseph’s life and see what we can learn from it.
Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie
Seven Seas Ministries
49 N Lamplighters Walk
Hampstead, NC 28443
401-439-3780
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