Joseph’s troubles started when his mouth did. He came to breakfast one morning, bubbling and blabbing in sickening detail about the images he had seen in his sleep: sheaves of wheat lying in a circle, all bundled up, ready for harvest. Each one tagged with the name of a different brother—Reuben, Gad, Levi, Zebulun, Judah . . . Right in the center of the circle was Joseph’s sheaf. In his dream only his sheaf stood up. The implication: you will bow down to me.
Did he expect his brothers to be excited about this? To pat him on the back and proclaim, “We will gladly kneel before you, our dear baby brother”? They didn’t. They kicked dust in his face and told him to get lost.
He didn’t take the hint. He came back with another dream. Instead of sheaves it was now stars, a sun, and a moon. The stars represented the brothers. The sun and moon symbolized Joseph’s father and deceased mother. All were bowing to Joseph. Joseph! The kid with the elegant coat and soft skin. They, bow down to him?
He should have kept his dreams to himself.
Perhaps Joseph was thinking that very thing as he sat in the bottom of that cistern. His calls for help hadn’t done any good. His brothers had seized the chance to seize and silence him once and for all.
But from deep in the pit, Joseph detected a new sound—the sound of a wagon and a camel, maybe two. Then a new set of voices. Foreign. They spoke to the brothers with an accent. Joseph strained to understand the conversation.
“We’ll sell him to you . . .”
“How much?”
“ . . . trade for your camels . . .”
Joseph looked up to see a circle of faces staring down at him.
Finally one of the brothers was lowered into the pit on the end of a rope. He wrapped both arms around Joseph, and the others pulled them out.
The traders examined Joseph from head to toe. They stuck fingers in his mouth and counted his teeth. They pinched his arms for muscle. The brothers made their pitch: “Not an ounce of fat on those bones. Strong as an ox. He can work all day.”
The merchants huddled, and when they came back with an offer, Joseph realized what was happening. “Stop this! Stop this right now! I am your brother! You can’t sell me!” His brothers shoved him to the side and began to barter.
“What will you pay for him?”
“We’ll give you ten coins.”
“No less than thirty.”
“Fifteen and no more.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Twenty, and that is our last offer.”
The brothers took the coins, grabbed the fancy coat, and walked away. Joseph fell on his knees and wailed. The merchants tied one end of a rope around his neck and the other to the wagon. Joseph, dirty and tearstained, had no choice but to follow. He fell in behind the creaking wagon and the rack-ribbed camels. He cast one final glance over his shoulder at the backs of his brothers, who disappeared over the horizon.
“Help me!”
“His brothers . . . sold him for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites who took Joseph with them down to Egypt” (Gen. 37:28 MSG).
Down to Egypt. Just a few hours ago Joseph’s life was looking up. He had a new coat and a pampered place in the house. He dreamed his brothers and parents would look up to him. But what goes up must come down, and Joseph’s life came down with a crash. Put down by his siblings. Thrown down into an empty well. Let down by his brothers and sold down the river as a slave. Then led down the road to Egypt.
Down, down, down. Stripped of name, status, position. Everything he had, everything he thought he’d ever have—gone. Vanished. Poof. Just like that.
Just like you? Have you been down in the mouth, down to your last dollar, down to the custody hearing, down to the bottom of the pecking order, down on your luck, down on your life . . . down . . . down to Egypt?
Life pulls us down.
Joseph arrived in Egypt with nothing. Not a penny to his name or a name worth a penny. His family tree was meaningless. His occupation was despised.1 The clean-shaven people of the pyramids avoided the woolly bedouins of the desert.
No credentials to stand on. No vocation to call on. No family to lean on. He had lost everything, with one exception. His destiny.
Those odd dreams had convinced Joseph that God had plans for him. The details were vague and ill defined, for sure. Joseph had no way of knowing the specifics of his future. But the dreams told him this much: he would have a place of prominence in the midst of his family. Joseph latched on to this dream for the life jacket it was.
How else do we explain his survival? The Bible says nothing about his training, education, superior skills, or talents. But the narrator made a lead story out of Joseph’s destiny.
The Hebrew boy lost his family, dignity, and home country, but he never lost his belief in God’s belief in him. Trudging through the desert toward Egypt, he resolved, It won’t end this way. God has a dream for my life. While wearing the heavy chains of the slave owners, he remembered, I’ve been called to more than this. Dragged into a city of strange tongues and shaved faces, he told himself, God has greater plans for me.
God had a destiny for Joseph, and the boy believed in it.
Do you believe in God’s destiny for you?
I’m entering my fourth decade as a pastor. Thirty years is plenty of time to hear Joseph stories. I’ve met many Egypt-bound people. Down, down, down. I’ve learned the question to ask. If you and I were having this talk over coffee, this is the point where I would lean across the table and say, “What do you still have that you cannot lose?” The difficulties have taken much away. I get that. But there is one gift your troubles cannot touch: your destiny. Can we talk about it?
You are God’s child. He saw you, picked you, and placed you. “You did not choose me; I chose you” (John 15:16 NCV). Before you are a butcher, baker, or cabinetmaker, male or female, Asian or black, you are God’s child. Replacement or fill-in? Hardly. You are his first choice.
Such isn’t always the case in life. Once, just minutes before I officiated at a wedding, the groom leaned over to me and said, “You weren’t my first choice.”
“I wasn’t?”
“No, the preacher I wanted couldn’t make it.”
“Oh.”
“But thanks for filling in.”
“Sure. Anytime.” I considered signing the marriage license “Substitute.”
You’ll never hear such words from God. He chose you. The choice wasn’t obligatory, required, compulsory, forced, or compelled. He selected you because he wanted to. You are his open, willful, voluntary choice. He walked onto the auction block where you stood, and he proclaimed, “This child is mine.” And he bought you “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19). You are God’s child.
You are his child forever.
Don’t believe the tombstone. You are more than a dash between two dates. “When this tent we live in—our body here on earth—is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever” (2 Cor. 5:1 TEV). Don’t get sucked into short-term thinking. Your struggles will not last forever, but you will.
God will have his Eden. He is creating a garden in which Adams and Eves will share in his likeness and love, at peace with each other, animals, and nature. We will rule with him over lands, cities, and nations. “If we endure, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2:12).
Believe this. Clutch it. Tattoo it on the interior of your heart. It may seem that the calamity sucked your life out to sea, but it hasn’t. You still have your destiny.
My father walked the road to Egypt. Family didn’t betray him; his health did. He had just retired. He and Mom had saved their money and made their plans. They wanted to visit every national park in their travel trailer. Then came the diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), a cruel degenerative disease that affects the muscles. Within months he was unable to feed, dress, or bathe himself. His world, as he knew it, was gone.
At the time my wife, Denalyn, and I were preparing to do mission work in Brazil. When we got the news, I offered to change my plans. How could I leave the country while he was dying? Dad’s reply was immediate and confident. He was not known for his long letters, but this one took up four pages and included the following imperative.
In regard to my disease and your going to Rio. That is really an easy answer for me, and that is Go . . . I have no fear of death or eternity . . . so don’t be concerned about me. Just Go. Please him.
Dad lost much: his health, retirement, years with his children and grandchildren, years with his wife. The loss was severe, but it wasn’t complete. “Dad,” I could have asked, “what do you have that you cannot lose?” He still had God’s call on his heart.
We forget this on the road to Egypt. Forgotten destinies litter the landscape like carcasses. We redefine ourselves according to our catastrophes. “I am the divorcée, the addict, the bankrupt business-person, the kid with the disability, or the man with the scar.” We settle for a small destiny: to make money, make friends, make a name, make muscle, or make love with anyone and everyone.
Determine not to make this mistake. Think you have lost it all? You haven’t. “God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty— never canceled, never rescinded” (Rom. 11:29 MSG). Hear and heed yours.
Here’s how it works. Your company is laying off employees. Your boss finally calls you into his office. As kind as he tries to be, a layoff is a layoff. All of a sudden you are cleaning out your desk. Voices of doubt and fear raise their volume. How will I pay the bills? Who is going to hire me? Dread dominates your thoughts. But then you remember your destiny: What do I have that I cannot lose?
Wait a second. I am still God’s child. My life is more than this life. These days are a vapor, a passing breeze. This will eventually pass. God will make something good out of this. I will work hard, stay faithful, and trust him no matter what.
Bingo. You just trusted your destiny.
Try this one. Your fiancé wants his engagement ring back. All those promises and the proposal melted the moment he met the new girl at work. The jerk. The bum. The no-good pond scum. Like Joseph, you’ve been dumped into the pit. And, like Joseph, you choose to heed the call of God on your life. It’s not easy. You’re tempted to get even. But you choose instead to ponder your destiny. I am God’s child. My life is more than this life . . . more than this broken heart. This is God’s promise, and unlike that sorry excuse for a guy, God won’t break a promise.
Another victory for God.
Survival in Egypt begins with a yes to God’s call on your life.
Several years after Dad’s death I received a letter from a woman who remembered him. Ginger was only six years old when her Sunday school class made get-well cards for ailing church members. She created a bright purple card out of construction paper and carefully lined it with stickers. On the inside she wrote, “I love you, but most of all God loves you.” Her mom baked a pie, and the two made the delivery.
Dad was bedfast. The end was near. His jaw tended to drop, leaving his mouth open. He could extend his hand, but it was bent to a claw from the disease.
Somehow Ginger had a moment alone with him and asked a question as only a six-year-old can: “Are you going to die?”
He touched her hand and told her to come near. “Yes, I am going to die. When? I don’t know.”
She asked if he was afraid to go away. “Away is heaven,” he told her. “I will be with my Father. I am ready to see him eye to eye.”
About this point in the visit, her mother and mine returned. Ginger recalls:
My mother consoled your parents with a fake smile on her face. But I smiled a big, beautiful, real smile, and he did the same and winked at me.
My purpose for telling you all this is my family and I are going to Kenya. We are going to take Jesus to a tribe on the coast. I am very scared for my children, because I know there will be hardships and disease. But for me, I am not afraid, because the worst thing that could happen is getting to see “my Father eye to eye.”
It was your father who taught me that earth is only a passing through and death is merely a rebirth.
A man near death winking at the thought of it. Stripped of everything? It only appeared that way. In the end Dad still had what no one could take. And in the end that is all he needed.