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Now the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard. ~ Genesis 37:36
Today, we conclude our study of Genesis 37 where the life of a seventeen year old teenager has been moved to center stage. We often see God in the Bible placing seemingly insignificant people at center stage to accomplish incredible things. I think of Ruth the Moabitess who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks but she bowed her will to the God of great miracles and she is noted in the lineage of the Messiah. I think of David who was the last son of Jesse whom God used to fell the frightening giant with one smoothed stone. Then there is Mary Magdalene, a woman from whom the Lord Jesus cast out seven demons. The name Magdalene reveals that she came from Magdala, a city on the southwest coast of the Sea of Galilee. Those port cities all have some crazy stories that explain how its people end up messing with the wrong stuff. After the Lord Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary, she became one of His most ardent followers. In fact, she was the only one of Christ’s who saw Him last at the cross and first at the tomb.
Throughout the Bible we see God using imperfect people for the sake of His mission to bring hope to the world. The Lord Jesus wasn't known for choosing individuals who were the most likely to succeed because those types of people usually have their eyes on the wrong man. When we get to the point that we believe God cannot possibly use us, it is then that we are useful to Him. The Lord Jesus used a bunch of flawed people to share His hope with a flawed and broken world. In God, we find newness of life, mending, and purpose. The Lord Jesus didn’t call the equipped, He equipped the called. And no matter what we have been through in life, we must remember that the same power that conquered the grave lives within us.
The means by which Joseph got to the center of the stage were not ordered by him. He did not want his brothers to hate him but they did and their hatred led them to sell Joseph to Midianite traders who were en route to Egypt. I am sure that when he discovered he had been purchased by Potiphar, Joseph had some reservations. Potiphar was the captain of the Egyptian king's guard. There weren’t many more powerful men around at that time. Interestingly, later we will learn that Potiphar was impressed with Joseph’s intelligence, I bet Joseph didn’t think of how his grade school learning would ever impress the second most important man in the world.
One of the most difficult parts of our personal relationship with God is the fact that He uses the trials of life to increase our confidence in Him. Early on in my Christian life I discovered that life was hard. In fact, even after I married my wife and we had a family, it was hard to make ends meet. Recently I asked Him why He made it so hard. He answered, "You had to be convinced that you needed me." In being convinced that we need Him, our confidence in Him is heightened because through the trials we are positioned to see that He is our only hope.
We find ourselves asking, "Why would a good and loving God allow us to go through such things as the death of a child, disease and injury to ourselves and our loved ones, financial hardships, rejection and fear?" The Bible clearly teaches that God loves those who are His children, and "He works all things together for our good." This means our trials He allows so that we might be given the privilege to know Him in an increasingly intimate way.
Our passage for today reads, "Now the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard."
This whole chapter starts with a picture of Jacob and his children, specifically Joseph, 17-years-old, the pride of his father. And we see Joseph talking with his brothers about dreams he’s having about him ruling over them. For obvious reasons that didn’t sit too well with his brothers, but it eventually led them to sell Joseph into slavery. At first, they were talking about killing him, but then they decided to sell him into slavery. And by the end of this chapter, this boy with this bright colored coat has been sold into slavery in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.
All of this just underscores the providence of God in the life of a yielded teenager. And, even though there would await for Joseph some intense moments of fighting off the advances of Potiphar's hot wife, God was still sovereign. A careful study of God's word reveals that God uses people who are not always the most qualified. Many times they were the least qualified! But what they did have, the needed depth of realizing that they desperately needed God, positioned them in a place of great usefulness. We learn that God uses people that are yielded and faithful to Him. God uses that man, that woman who is open and ready to be used by Him. He uses the ones who are willing to pay the price of personal sacrifice on behalf of the Lord Jesus. Sacrifice is the foundation to real community.
D. L. Moody, the evangelist, significantly used by God, was convinced that total surrender to God was the key to successful ministry. This was reinforced in the early years of his ministry when he heard the British evangelist Henry Varley say, “The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to him.” Moody asked God to make him that man, and, boy did He. Dwight Moody wasn’t perfect. He was flawed and limited, but he was open to God’s use. Moody was willing to be less so that Christ could be more. In the end, God used the converted shoe salesman to become the leading evangelist of his day. Estimates vary, but Moody is thought to have been used of God to led as many as a million people to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
