Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 39.
And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man;
and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian (Genesis 39:2).
Notice the three statements in v. 2:
First: “And the LORD was with Joseph.” This key statement is repeated no less
than four times in this chapter, twice in the beginning (vv. 2, 3) and twice at
the end (vv. 21, 23). Some have called this the Emmanuel Principle. Paul summed
this up in Romans 8:31 when he asked, “If God be for us, who can be against
us?”
Second: “and he was a prosperous man.” Last we heard of Joseph in Genesis 37 he
had been stripped of his coat of many colors, cast into a pit, most likely
naked, and sold into slavery. He had no clothes, no money, no possessions, no
family (they had sold him!), and yet Moses says, “and he was a prosperous man.”
This is before he rose to the top. He was a prosperous man when he was a naked
slave at the bottom of a waterless pit. The man who has Christ in his heart is
never a poor man, but he is a prosperous man. This statement is not about the
outer but the inner man.
Third: “and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.” Later, Moses will
say, “and he served him” (v. 4). Joseph had respect for those in a sphere of
authority over him. He was not anti-authoritarian. He trusted in the providence
of God. The LORD was with him, and, in the end, the evil done to him would be
turned to good (see Genesis 50:20, perhaps the theme verse of the entire Joseph
narrative).
As the LORD was with
Joseph, so he is always with his elect.
The Dutch Christian
Corrie Ten Boom who suffered in a concentration camp in WW2 wrote, “There is no
pit so deep enough, that He is not deeper still” (as cited by J. Currid, Genesis
2:232).
In describing the
birth of our Lord, Matthew cites Isaiah 7:14 to say of Christ, “and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is,
God with us” (Matthew 1:23). In Hebrews 13:5 the Lord says to his saints by his
apostle, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
Whether we stand at the pinnacle of power or on the floor of the
prison, we who believe in Christ know it to be true. He is with us, and that is
always enough.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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