Are you willing to wait? part 1

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” NKJV.
 

This week we are going to be looking at Genesis 40, which happened more than a thousand years before Isaiah 40 was written. In Genesis 40, the person we’ll be focusing on is in prison, yet he seemed to already know the truth behind what Isaiah would write all those years later.  (He was in prison, not because he did something wrong but because he did things right.)
 

Here is the single most important fact about Genesis 40. At the beginning of the chapter, Joseph is in prison; and at the end he is still in prison. I will be quick to say, “That’s not fair,” but there it is. And I think it’s there, in part, because we will all, occasionally, face circumstances that seem very unfair.
 

This week I am going to challenge you by asking, “Are you willing to wait for God?”
 

In this chapter, Joseph is waiting because, to put it simply, there is nothing else he can do. He can’t get out of prison, he can’t appeal his sentence, and he certainly can’t escape. He’s stuck in an Egyptian prison far from home (where they think he’s dead anyway). And he has been falsely accused of rape by Potiphar’s wife - you have to know that you don’t have very many friends in that situation! So instead of whining and complaining, Joseph trusts God and he waits.

The truth is: Most of us hate to wait, especially when we feel life isn’t being fair. At this point most readers of this story face a problem: because we know how Joseph’s life ends up, it’s easy for us to read Joseph’s story in light of how it ends. We know that eventually he emerges triumphant and that he will one day say to the brothers, who betrayed him, “You planned evil against me; God planned it for good…” Genesis 50:20, CSB.
 

The problem is that we tend to read this whole story as if Joseph himself knew how it was going to end. But that just isn’t true. Yes, Joseph had some God-given dreams and he trusted God - but dreams die fast when life is unfair and there is no end in sight. It is vital for us to remember that when Joseph was thrown into the pit by his brothers, he had no idea what was going to happen next. He knew as much about his future at that point as you and I do about ours right now. It’s not as if God whispered, “Hang tough, kid! Don’t let ‘em get you down. Pretty soon you’ll be the Prime Minister of Egypt.” It just didn’t happen that way. This is not a fairy tale. While Joseph is stuck in prison, he has absolutely no inside knowledge regarding how, when, or even if he will ever get out. He certainly knows nothing of the baker and the cupbearer at the beginning of this chapter. Joseph has been given zero “inside knowledge;” yet, he chooses to trust God and wait. 
 

So, let’s read Genesis 40, as Joseph would have lived it, with no hint of what the future might hold. Here’s a short summary of this chapter: Joseph in jail; two men join him in the prison; two dreams; two interpretations; one lives, one dies; one man forgets; Joseph still in jail. That’s the whole chapter right there.
 

Meanwhile, Joseph waits to see what will happen next. Waiting is perhaps the hardest discipline of the Christian life. Most of us hate to wait. I know I do. Probably all of us are waiting for something at this very moment - waiting for your grades; waiting to graduate; waiting to be accepted to college; waiting for your first job offer; waiting to see if the bank will give you a loan; waiting for the right time to start a family; waiting for a new job; waiting for retirement; waiting for your loved ones to come to Christ; waiting to meet the right guy or the right girl; waiting to be married; waiting to find out what God wants you to do; waiting for someone to buy your house; waiting for your prayers to be answered; waiting for your spouse to come home from a business trip; waiting for your child to come back to the Lord.

Prison – this prison of waiting - became a School of Spiritual Growth for Joseph.
 

Continued tomorrow