The Staff of Joseph

As we’ve learned in reflecting on Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the shepherd’s staff is not only designed for the open fields. Sometimes it leads through pits, slave caravans, prison cells, forgotten dreams, and palace halls. The Lord does not only prepare His servants for the promise. More than this, and far more importantly, God is so good, that He prepares His people for the position that the promise requires.

Joseph received a dream from God while he was still a young man. It was glorious, but it was incomplete. It set the stage for an extraordinary life, and would require great lengths to see through. Heaven revealed the destination, but thanks be to God, Heaven also concealed the journey.

Many of us desire the promise, but few of us desire the process. We celebrate the dream, yet resist the betrayal, twists or even boneshaking disappointment that often precede it. Joseph was rejected by his brothers, falsely accused, forgotten by men. Then, throughout countless trials, he was tested in secret.

His heart cry likely matched many of ours if we’ve encountered the dark night of the soul. A bitter cry, sometimes brief. A “Why God?” Or, “Is this really your plan Lord?” It isn’t wrong to ask, in fact I believe we are invited to plead and cry out and question just like the great saints of old. Think Jonah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Elijah. The cry stirs the heart to faith again, because on the other side of despair in the believer’s walk, is deliverance. And on the other side of lamentation, we find praise. If only we learn to humble ourselves in the midst of the crying, and to trust.

For Joseph, while facing terrible injustice, he refused to let bitterness become his companion. He held tightly to the staff the Lord had placed in his hand. And what a staff it was.

The staff of forgiveness.

God was not simply taking Joseph to Egypt. He was shaping a man who could carry authority without revenge. He was preparing him to walk the narrow road later traversed by Christ, and in the incredible ways in which Joseph overcame evil, he became a Christ-like figure to greatly marvel at.

Position reveals the true condition of the heart. That’s why Joseph was just as powerful in a prison as he was at the right hand of Pharoah. He served with love, steadfastness and authority while serving the sentence of one falsely accused. He didn’t perform for the wealthy elites and men in authority. He performed for God Almighty, the only one who sees the act of quiet submission, the prayer of invisible attrition, the radical acts of faith done in absolute darkness.

But amazingly, when Joseph finally stood beside the king, clothed in honour and entrusted with power over an entire nation, his greatest test was still before him. The deepest yearning would not prove to be famine in that ancient desert. The greatest trial would be whether or not he could rise to the most Christlike place of all. The next test would prove to be Joseph’s place of the skull, an archetypal Golgotha, where the crowd standing with hammer and nail were his own flesh and blood.

Indeed, this great testing of Joseph was a test to learn if he could practice forgiveness. The brothers who had sold him now stood trembling before him. In a single word, he could have condemned them. In a single command, he could have repaid every wound with the sweet, terrible taste of vengeance. He could have. He had the human right to. In Old Testament Law he justifiably ought to have.

Instead, he wept.

The journey to the right hand of the most powerful in his generation had produced something so much greater than influence and comfort and perceived justice. It had produced Christlike mercy.

Joseph so beautifully reveals the paradox of God’s Kingdom. The Most High does not raise into positions so we can settle the score. He raises us so we can display His heart of compassion. The higher the position, the greater the opportunity to extend grace. What a triumphant high place to live.

Jesus Himself walked the greater Joseph story. Betrayed by His own, sold for silver, falsely condemned, yet exalted to the right hand of the Great I Am. And from that place of highest authority, He refuses still to pronounce vengeance over those who pierced Him. Instead, He weeps. He prays, “Father, forgive them.”

Perhaps the greatest evidence that God has fulfilled His promise in your life is not the title you carry or the seat you occupy, but the people you choose to forgive when you finally have the power not to. The ones that may never say, “thank you,” may never be transformed themselves, and may even begrudge your mercy as unacceptable to their darkened hearts. Nevertheless, you serve and love and forgive without any expectation of reciprocation. We love because Christ loved us. Not because we are going to receive every emotional reward on this side of Heaven.

The staff of Joseph reminds us that receiving an extraordinary destiny is only the beginning. The road is long. It winds through valleys and victories alike. But if we remain faithful to the Good Shepherd, He will lead us to stand before kings. And one day, we will do our very best, to come off our faces to look up, for on that Day we’ll be kneeling, humbling ourselves, lying prostrate before the King of kings.

And when that day comes, we will know instantaneously how pure and how right and how good it truly was to let our hands hold mercy more tightly than justice. Because we’ll only know mercy from Christ if we receive the one thing that Joseph so powerfully held in his own hands.

The staff of forgiveness. What a precious and timeless and powerful rod to hold. Hold it by faith, and better yet, learn to give it away. Then your declaration will be Joseph’s greatest testimony of all. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”

Amen, what man, the devil, and this world mean for evil, God can turn to good in your life. All the more swiftly, if you hold the staff of forgiveness.

Keep Breathing,
Daniel Kooman