Today’s verses are mostly focused on the story of Joseph. Many people know Joseph as the dreamer, but more impressive to me was his gift to interpret dreams. Before we start, I want to mention my dream last night. I dreamed that the church in America needs to reach out to the black community right now. There’s a lot of hurting people and we need to be finding the unity that Jesus prayed His people would all have. In Matthew, Jesus promised to return only after every race of people was reached with the gospel. The occult is always stirring up racial problems because this helps add just a little time before evil is judged. But we cannot fall into those traps and God wants His people to reach out when people are hurting.
That said, Joseph, the great interpreter of dreams, said that interpretations belong to the Lord. The only way to understand a dream is by the Spirit of God. But that isn’t the only thing that there is to interpret. The Bible needs to be interpreted, signs of the times, tongues, and all of the ways that God can communicate with people need to be interpreted. If we try to understand these things with minds and hearts that are deceitfully wicked above all things, we will never see clearly. So I pray that our study will help people understand by the Holy Spirit and I pray that everyone reading this will be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Let’s see how Joseph points to Jesus. This could probably be a whole book! But I’ll focus on the bigger story of his life and not get into each detail. Joseph was told by God that he would lead all the tribes of Israel and they would all bow down to him. But they were angry at him for wanting to do God’s will and lead the entire family of Israel so they conspired to kill him. But he didn’t die, he went into suffering and trouble for a long time. But in the end, God placed Joseph in charge of not only all the tribes of Israel, but all the land of Egypt as well.
If it isn’t screaming ‘life of Jesus’ yet, focus. Jesus was sent to lead Israel but Israel rejected and killed him. He didn’t stay dead though, He went to intercede for His people who were being persecuted and killed. When the time comes at the end, all the tribes of Israel will gather to Him and know that He was always supposed to have been the leader. They will know that they rejected Him and will be very afraid. But He will weep for them and plead with them not to fear Him.
“Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land,, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” Genesis 45: 4-7
The apostle Paul speaks of the coming in of Israel in the end times as well. Those 7 years of famine are significant to the story of end times too. The thing that will cause Israel to return to Jesus is not what people are looking for now. It will be trouble that causes them to see and God has been preparing the way for Jesus to help Israel for longer than even makes sense to us. But He didn’t just prepare a way to save Israel. Before They were saved, Joseph was saving Egypt, even Pharaoh. He wanted to save his family but they had sent him away and his help wasn’t accepted until they came to him in their time of need.
You know Joseph being a picture of Jesus also gives us some understanding about Jesus ability to interpret. He is the interpretation of the Bible, dreams, visions, words from God, languages, signs and everything else. The Holy Spirit is the interpreter, but Jesus is the interpretation. Everything true in this world points to Him, the Bible from cover to cover, the events of life, everything.
I also want to point out where Jesus puts His family during the famine. He hides them away in Goshen. That’s going to be a big part of the story coming up soon. But it happens right here in the time when they turned to Him to be their deliverer. We will pick back up there tomorrow. If you want to read along with today’s reading it was Genesis 40-50. God bless all y’all:)
Practice Outlaw 