Joseph: A Prosperous Slave

Genesis 39:2 – And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.

    The account of Joseph’s life is a fascinating story and seems to reveal a pattern of how God works in the lives of men. He has just been sold as a slave and removed from his familiar homeland. He has been purchased and now owned outright as another’s property. Yesterday, he was a promising young man with a bright tomorrow, but today, he is an outcast and unknown slave. On the surface, things look very bleak for his future, but Scripture, as always, digs down below the surface to reveal the true nature of things.

    Everything had been ripped from him and stripped away; his family; his home; his friends; his possessions; and even, his hope. He had nothing and yet, he had everything, because the Lord was with Joseph. This verse does not say that Joseph was with the Lord; it says that the Lord was with Joseph. The Lord is with us. He is with us in our sin and disobedience and in our frailty and weakness. He is with us in our self-confident boasting and our self-deprecating whining. In the good and the bad; in the light and the dark; in hope or despair; He is with us because that is His choice.

    A survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, Victor Frankl, has written, ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.’ Joseph exercised the last of human freedoms; he made a choice to recognize that even though everything had been taken, the Lord was present with him. He did not focus on what men had taken from him, he focused on the one thing that men could never take from him. A. W. Tozer would call this, ‘the blessedness of possessing nothing.’ A rich man who does not have God with him is poor, and a poor man who has God with him is rich.

   Joseph was without any material possessions of his own and, yet, we are told he was a prosperous man. True prosperity is always interior, as a cause, first, and exterior, as an effect, later. It is never a pursuit of mere money; it is always a product of much meaning. It encompasses and includes every aspect of our life; spiritual, social, emotional, physical and financial. The Hebrew word ‘shalom’ might describe it best; complete wholeness and total wellness; perfect peace and joyful satisfaction; nothing missing; nothing broken.

Prosperity means that we are advancing forward and making progress on the road of life, and that is always the will of God for His children. It includes the idea of making breakthroughs, and where would our world be if we did not have any breakthroughs? There are breakthroughs in many different areas of life such as medicine and technology, and each breakthrough blazed a trail, and made a way, for others to follow. In the account of Joseph’s life, he also prospered and had a breakthrough, and that breakthrough saved a nation. Be encouraged, friends, God is with us, and if that is so, then He is all we will need. Whatever your current station or status in life is, because God is with you, you have His wisdom, His grace, His strength, His peace and everything that comes along with Him. You are a prosperous slave!