Joseph: A Righteous Man (pt. 1)

Today, I want to share about one of my favorite Bible characters, Joseph. You probably already know Joseph's story, but if you don't, open up your Bible to Genesis 37, 39-45. Whew! That's 7 chapters! You're probably thinking that that's WAY too much to read all at one time. That's why we're gonna split his story up into 3 blog postst, starting with today's post.

Go ahead and read Genesis 37 (yep, the whole thing). The first thing you'll notice about Joseph is that he was the favorite child (verse 3) and one of his father's displays of his love to Joseph was a gift of a coat of many colors. On one hand, Joseph was loved by his father, but on the other hand, he was hated by his brothers. Who does that sound like? (hint- starts with J and ends with esus) Yeah- Jesus. Jesus was loved by His Heavenly Father, but the people around Him hated Him so much that they killed him. Which is exactly what Joseph's brothers intended to do to him- "When Joseph's brothers saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance. As he approached, they made plans to kill him." (Genesis 37:18). The story continues with Joseph being sold to slave traders and taken Egypt instead of being murdered. From the very beginning, you can see that God had his hand of protection over Joseph even through this dark time.

We kind of skipped over one very important factor in Joseph's life: he had a very special talent: interpreting dreams. We'll come back to that later.

Skipping to Genesis 39, we find Joseph in a (what seems to be) good home. He is placed in charge of the home of an Egyptian officer, Potiphar. But Potiphar's wife lusted after Joseph and demanded that he sleep with her, but Joseph refused. He knew that he would be sinning against God and his master, Potiphar. Read Genesis 39:11-17 to see what she does.

So Joseph is thrown into prison. But take a look at Genesis 39:21-23: But the LORD was with Joseph in the prison and showed him His faithful love. And the LORD made Joseph a favorite with the prison warden. Before long, the warden put Joseph in charge of all the other prisoners and over everything that happened in the prison. The warden had no more worries, because Joseph took care of everything. The LORD was with him and caused everything he did to succeed.

Because of Joseph's righteous character, God was with him and led him to be a favorite. See, God really did know what He was doing with Joseph's life.

Be sure to check back in for part two and three of our study of Joseph!

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