I think of myself, I'm originally from Canada and so I'm slightly displaced, living down in Texas.
I've lived here now 15 years but very different because the cultures and the language are very,
very similar, and we have a funny way of talking about a few things and so on, but very different
for Joseph, and there was even some displacement in me moving but how much more profound it would
be for, I chose to move, I wasn't sold, and for Joseph, he had obviously no say in what
happened. What part of Canada, were you raised in? Well, originally from the west coast,
from Vancouver. My dad was a pastor. Beautiful area. We lived a long part of my life in
central Canada in Saskatoon when I was a little boy growing up, much colder there than Vancouver,
and for a time, in my junior high years, we lived in Ottawa, in the eastern Canada, so I have a little bit
of experience across the the country, but I'm a westerner by heart, so I would call Vancouver home.
Would you? Yeah, haven't lived there a long time but I'd still call it home. When you move from
there to Texas for your further education, at seminary, you obviously felt the cultural
shift but you were so excited about coming, as I remember your telling me that it was altogether
different from Joseph, as he must have wondered where all of this is going, you know we're able
to read the whole story, chapter 37, all the way to chapter 50 and you know, you have to wait on
the end, you can jump to the end and and see what going to lead to but he had no idea at the
time, where this was going to go and that's so much like life, we get ourselves into a predicament
and we think, next week it'll be better or next month or it's for a short period of time. It's
true in history, countries go to war, they'll be back by Christmas and life doesn't
go like that and I always think that's part of the beauty of Joseph. Joseph goes chapter after
after chapter, going through all these situations. Not only does it not get better, it
gets worse. It gets much worse.We have to address that time, when he's alone with
Potifer's wife and she makes her moves and is determined, with her lustful heart, to get him to
yield and have sex with her and he absolutely resists all of her advances, in fact, runs and she
screams, "Rape." Her husband believes her and he winds up thrown in prison. And there you have that,
you have the circumstances and then the truth of the matter is, he did nothing wrong. There's
the accusation, which sits over his head and then there's the truth, which is, "Now I'm in prison, in
a foreign place, in a foreign speaking, foreign language, far from my family, no one there to defend
me. In an Egyptian prison, no one there to feed me, even in these times, most people were fed by
family and friends. The government didn't provide for food in prisons and he's completely
isolated. When you think about that and you're going to teach it, let's say to a group
of people that are from all different backgrounds, do you take time to deal with the losses
and the heartbreak and the displacement and the hurt? Or, do you find yourself moving quickly to
the solutions that came? Well, I think we want to but I think that's the beauty of how
this story goes. There's lots of great stories in Scripture. This one's great and long and so unless
you're going to jump the text, you work your way through it and it just spirals down
hill and I think that's where we can relate to Joseph. We have times where we too have been,
maybe accused of something that we didn't do, or in circumstances, certainly we didn't wish upon
ourselves and so on and we can start to relate to Joseph that way and I think the happy
ending that happens at the end, not all of our stories were quite like that. No, they don't.
But, we can relate to a lot of Joseph's life and a lot of his story. I'm reminded of the proverb, "When
a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him." Yeah, it's a great
proverb and it isn't just wishful thinking, it's often exactly right, exactly true to what happens
and here he is landing on his feet when he gets thrown in prison, unfairly, misjudged and there
he is and the Lord blesses him there and he emerges in a place of trust, in the eyes of
the warden, we would call him and he's over all the other prisoners. Isn't that amazing?
And that it's already repeated, he was blessed by God in Potifer's home and was
over all the servants there and his whole household. Including the finances, trusted
all the way. That's right and then falsely accused and now is in prison and the same thing
the Lord is blessing him and even the dreams that he had had back home, I mean, they were dreams of
blessing that got him in trouble with his brothers and so we've already seen God has
a special place for Joseph and yet his story isn't at this point a good one, it's a
downhill, unfair, mistreated, misguided, I'm locked up and no sense of time. This is the thing, we
can go, "Oh, he gets out." But, he can't do that, day after day, he sits in the prison,
unfairly accused. And even when a fellow prisoner says, "If you help me, I'll remember you
and then I'll come back in and see that your pardoned, or get you out." And he forgets it.