Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 40.
“Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him”
(Genesis 40:23).
What if your birthday came and not a single person remembered
you? You got no gifts, no cards, no texts.
What if you got sick and went into the hospital and got no
visitors, no calls from friends, no consolation, no offers of help?
It can indeed be very disappointing to be forgotten by men.
There were men in the Bible who sometimes felt this way. Righteous
Job, for example, in the midst of his suffering, lamented, “My kinfolk have failed,
and my familiar friends have forgotten me” (Job 19:14).
Worse yet, some men sense that they have been forgotten by
God himself. Psalm 13 begins with the lament, “How long wilt thou forget me, O
LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hid thy face from me?” (v. 1).
In Genesis 40 we read how Joseph was cast into prison after
being falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. He had been sold into slavery by his
own brothers at age 17 (Genesis 37:2). The next chapter begins two years later
when Joseph was 30 (cf. Genesis 41:1, 46). This means in Genesis 40 he was 28
years old and had been in slavery or prison for 11 years (since he was 17)!
Genesis 40 records how two servants of the king of Egypt were
also in the prison with Joseph: the butler and the baker. They each had dreams,
and Joseph accurately interpreted both, asking the men, “Do not interpretations
belong to God?” (v. 8). Just as Joseph had predicted by their dreams, the king
ordered the butler restored to his position and the baker put to death. Joseph
had asked the butler, “Think on me when it shall be well with thee…” (v. 14),
but the chapter ends, “Yet did not the chief butler
remember Joseph, but forgat him” (v. 23).
Joseph was forgotten by men.
One commentator observed:
“It is difficult to fathom, but nowhere in the text does it say that Joseph
became discouraged or was in despair” (Currid, Genesis, 2:249).
He had been 11 years a
slave and prisoner and would wait two more years forgotten by men, but he did
not despair.
Joseph becomes a model
for the believer who perseveres in the faith even in the face of the severest
of trials. The LORD was with him (see Genesis 39:2-3, 21, 23). We too must
continue to trust and to persevere in the Lord. He will not forget us, and He
will not forget our works of service to Him. So the apostle wrote, “For God is
not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have showed
toward his name” (Hebrews 6:10).
The believer might be forgotten by men, but he will never be
forgotten by God.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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