I had initially started this blog post as the next episode of my podcast, but 20 minutes into it, Galaxy (one of my cats) decided to stand on my power button and shut down my computer. So that means I would have had to record the whole thing over again, and, quite frankly, I'm not in the mood to do that right now. So now there is a change of plans. The next section of this Genesis study will be done here.
God orchestrated the events of Joseph's life in such a way that he became a life preserver not just for Egypt but for all nations who had been affected by the famine, including his own family. The freewill sins of his brothers, jealousy, anger, bitterness, resentment, and hatred led Joseph's brothers to sell him into slavery and then lie to their father, saying he had been killed. But God weaved all of those bad things together and worked them out for the ultimate good (Romans 8:28), which is what God's sovereignty really is.
Joseph named his firstborn son "Manasseh," which sounds like and is derived from the Hebrew for "forget." Joseph did this because he said, "“It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.” He named his second son Ephraim, which sounds like the Hebrew for "twice fruitful because he said God had made him fruitful in the land of his suffering (Genesis 41:50-52). David Guzik has some good insights on this in his Enduring Word Bible commentary. He says we can't be Ephraim until we are first Manasseh. We can't really be fruitful until we are also forgetting. In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis described Hell as a place where no one forgets anything. It was his idea that in Hell, each person would remember every offense, every slight, every cruel exchange of words, every wrong ever done to them, and everyone would be utterly unforgiving. But in Heaven, all these things are put away because all things have become new. What fruitfulness is being held back in your life because you will not forget something that should be overlooked? The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-14 that one thing he did was to forget what was behind and strain toward what is ahead. So he pressed on toward the goal to win the prize for which God had called him heavenward in Christ Jesus.
The seven-year famine of Joseph's day was international in scope. People had to come from nations all around to buy food. And why was there food in Egypt? Because Joseph was there. And why was Joseph there? Because our sovereign God worked out the circumstances so that he would be. That's why Joseph had the dream of his brothers bowing down to him. Joseph was supposed to be at an appointed place at a specified time, and he would be there one way or the other. If it had not been for his brothers' sin, there would have been some other way. And again, when the people come crying to Pharaoh for food, he tells them to go see Joseph. If things go well, Pharaoh gets the credit for appointing Joseph to such a position. If it doesn't, it's Joseph's fault because he was in charge. Pharaoh was no dummy. So when the famine covered everywhere in that part of the world, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold the surplus grain they had been collecting for the previous seven years. And people came from all the surrounding nations to buy food.
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