The Life God Blesses

Dave Edgren explores how the story of Joseph can teach us how to manage what we have.

He’d been spitefully sold into slavery by his brothers, unfairly thrown into jail by his master, dishearteningly forgotten by his cellmate and now called before pharaoh. If his past were anything to judge by, Joseph would have been expecting the worst.

But Joseph didn’t live in the past. He always made the best of his present situation. He so impressed the slavers that he was sold into a royal household, so improved Potiphar’s house that he was given authority over it, so carefully kept his cell that he was made warden of the prison and now, he faced Pharaoh with confidence.

“Both . . . dreams mean the same thing,”

Joseph told Pharaoh. “God is telling Pharaoh in advance what he is about to do. . . . The next seven years will be a period of great prosperity throughout the land of Egypt. But afterward there will be seven years of famine so great that all the prosperity will be forgotten. . . . Therefore, Pharaoh should find an intelligent and wise man and put him in charge of the entire land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:25, 29, 30, 33, NLT).

Did Joseph intend for Pharaoh to consider him for the position? The pharaoh had sought all the wisest men in the land to interpret his terrifying dreams.

They tried and failed. Then Pharaoh’s butler remembered the Israelite slave— his old cellmate. And he knew exactly where to find Joseph—right where he left him two years before, when Joseph had correctly interpreted his own dream.

Joseph could have been bitter. His entire life was spent serving others—cleaning up their mess, caring for their stuff and doing their work. But instead, he chose to make lemonade with every lemon he received. Joseph had become a great man through his heartaches.

No doubt he remembered the lessons his father had taught him—stories of Adam, Enoch and Noah. He wanted to be like them—a man who walked with God.

The next words out of Joseph’s mouth demonstrate his understanding and application of God’s way of life. “Then Pharaoh should appoint supervisors over the land and let them collect onefifth of all the crops during the seven good years” (Genesis 41:34). In Joseph’s history book (he lived before Moses, the Ten Commandments or the writing of any Scriptures!) there was a man whose example told him what to do. After winning a battle, Abraham was blessed by Melchizedek, the High Priest. Abraham knew God had blessed him with a battle win and returned the favour by giving 10 per cent of his bounty to God (see Genesis 14).

Joseph applied his great grandfather’s logic to the seven-year windfall that was approaching—he recommended a tithe be taken of the seven years of bounty.

But then he did something interesting; he doubled it—effectively paying a tithe for the seven years of drought. Was Joseph thanking God for the drought? He was certainly stating that, just like the seven years of plenty, the drought was part of God’s plan.

Through his years of slavery and imprisonment, Joseph had learned a valuable lesson—nothing actually belongs to us. Ultimately, everything is God’s. He gives it. He takes it away. And Joseph had learned that success in life is not shown by what you own but in how you manage that which is entrusted to you.

This is the key to both good stewardship and a life free from obsession with worldly acquisition.