Great Moments in Bible History
Number 45
What is Success?
In most societies really big success means being wealthy and famous. In our society, how you behave has very little affect on whether you are considered successful. Some rich and famous people use their success as an excuse to behave like jerks—and most people don’t seem to care. From what I read in history and especially in the Bible, I know it has always been that way. As a result, when Joseph was exalted from the dungeon to the second highest position in Egypt, he suddenly faced temptations he had never faced before.
“Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, ‘Bow the knee!’ Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:42-43). The signet ring gave him authority to sign laws with the authority of Pharaoh behind him. The linen clothes were the fancy clothes of the time. Just like today, the only people who wear expensive gold jewelry are rich people. Joseph was now one of the richest men on earth. The second chariot that he rode in would be like getting to ride around in one of the president’s limousines. If that were not enough, Pharaoh gave him a society wife—the daughter of the priest of On, which probably meant that her father (and she herself) were worshippers of the sun-god Re.
So, Joseph had instant wealth, fame, and power. He was surrounded by other “successful” people. Few (if any) of those people would have cared about poor people. None of them knew the true God—not even his wife. All the pressure on Joseph would have been to live just as selfishly as all the other successful people around him.
Who could resist such temptations? It is unlikely that Joseph could have back when he was seventeen years old and the spoiled favorite of his father. But he is now thirty years old. God has been training him for thirteen years in preparation for the temptations of this day. God was not giving him a powerful position so that he could use it for his own selfish purposes. His job was to prepare for a famine and thus save countless lives. He wasted no time getting started. “And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh and went through all the land of Egypt” (verse 46). He had only seven years to prepare for a terrible famine. “During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, and he gathered up all the food of these seven years, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food in the cities. He put in every city the food from the fields around it. And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured” (verses 47-49).
One of the lessons of this story in Genesis is the great good God can accomplish through someone who refuses the temptation to coddle himself or to become arrogant—who instead diligently does his work. Indeed, all the examples of great people in the Bible show these same traits. None of them were concerned about worldly success. They were simply people of faith who did what they knew God wanted them to do. Who has the real success, the rich and famous or those men and women through the years who have humbly done what God has given them to do?
What Are Blessings For?
The health-and-wealth preachers (who are always popular) tell us that God wants to give us a blessing. He wants us to be happy. “Name it and claim it!” “He wants you to be healthy and rich!” These things are preached every Sunday in pulpits across the country, but such preachers are presenting a lie.
God’s beloved Son lived His whole life in poverty. Jesus told us that only certain people can follow Him—only those willing to put aside their own desires and put God’s Kingdom above everything else in their lives. “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). That is the very opposite of the health-and-wealth doctrine.
But if this is true (and it certainly is), then why did God bless people in the Bible? The principle we find in the Bible is that God blesses people so they can use what He gives them to bless others. We see that in this story of Joseph. God did not give him blessings so that he could just live it up. He gave him the blessings so that he could save the world from the coming famine.
The same is true for us today. Whatever God gives me—money, health, authority—all of those are intended to be used to serve others and build up God’s Kingdom. Sometimes, God gives us things we would rather not have—like sickness and poverty. Even those are intended for the ultimate good of His Kingdom. We saw that in Joseph’s life. The years of slavery and imprisonment ultimately worked out for the good of the whole world.
A Family at Last
For thirteen years the only family Joseph had was the one that had sold him into slavery. During those years he spent in the dungeon he must have had little hope of ever having a family of his own. With his new position in Egypt Pharaoh also gave him a wife. Sometime during the next seven years (the “good” years) he had two sons. He gave each of them a Hebrew name. The explanation he gave for each name shows his view of his family.
He named his first son Manasseh, which means, “making to forget.” He explained, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house” (Genesis 41:51). You have to have a pretty bad family to be thankful that God has made you forget it, but it certainly seemed like his estimate of that family was correct. Few people have ever had families who treated them worse than Joseph’s brothers treated him. It is worth noting that in Joseph’s powerful position, if he had wanted to go visit his family, surely he could have gotten Pharaoh’s permission to take a vacation. Even if he didn’t feel that he could take the time off for such a trip, he could have sent a messenger asking the family to come visit him in Egypt. He did neither of those things. Instead, he was thankful that God had made him forget that family.
He named his second son Ephraim, which means, “making fruitful.” He explained, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” As far as Joseph was concerned, God had replaced his bad old family with a nice new one.
God is not going to leave things where Joseph seems content to have them left. God still has not fulfilled the promises he made to Joseph in the two dreams he had at the age of seventeen. In order to have those dreams fulfilled, he will have to somehow get back together with his family. At this point, he does not seem to want that. Unbeknownst to Joseph, though, God has been working on the hearts of his brothers to bring about repentance. God will also have to work on Joseph’s heart. He will start doing that in the next chapter.
A Successful Work
Joseph worked hard during those seven years of plenty. I don’t know how many people in Egypt believed a famine was coming. It certainly did not look like it at the time. But Joseph had no doubt. God had foretold it and he knew God doesn’t lie.
“The seven years of plenty that occurred in the land of Egypt came to an end, and the seven years of famine began to come, as Joseph had said. There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread” (Genesis 41:53-54). Joseph’s work was successful! When the time came, Egypt was ready—and all because of Joseph.
“When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, ‘Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.’ So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:55-56). Egypt was saved!
In the next verse we learn that it wasn’t just Egypt that was in trouble with the famine. “Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.” In the Bible, the phrase “all the earth” often means the part of the earth known to the people being talked about at the time. In this case, “all the earth” would have included the nations around Egypt. The fact that those neighbor nations were suffering a famine at the same time as Egypt was actually rather strange. Egypt was a desert and received hardly any rain. Their water came from the Nile. A famine that affected Egypt happened only when the rains failed at the headwaters of the Nile (hundreds of miles away in southern Sudan). On the other hand, Canaan, immediately to the north of Egypt, depended on local rains for their crops. It was unusual for Egypt and Canaan to suffer a famine at the same time, but this was part of God’s plan. In the next chapter some men will come from Canaan to buy food. They will be the very men Joseph was thankful to have forgotten. As we will see in the next few chapters, God had a different idea.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible.