Joseph's Vision

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Let's have a Bible quiz to start off. Let's test your knowledge. Where? I'm going to ask you for chapter and verse. Chapter is fine. Okay, I won't be picky. Chapter. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Where in the text do we find. [00:00:24] Speaker A: The instruction to Joseph to test his brothers? There is a prize for the person who can call out the verse or verses. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Joseph rises right from the dungeon to become the viceroy. His brothers come before him. What does he do? He puts them through this elaborate, painful series of tests. He accuses them of being spies. He holds a hostage. He holds Simeon hostage. Puts a cup in Binyamin's sack. Right? We know what happened. It's Parsha Miketz. [00:00:59] Speaker A: It's this week. [00:01:00] Speaker B: So where is it? Where is the verse that says, vayomer Adonai el Yosef? Test your brothers. Put your brothers to the test. And the Lord said to Joseph, you brothers need to learn a lesson. And here's how I want you to do it. Where is it? [00:01:23] Speaker A: Nowhere. [00:01:23] Speaker B: It's not in there. [00:01:24] Speaker A: You won't find it. And that raises a question. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Why did he do it? Why did he do it? [00:01:39] Speaker A: There's a very simple, raw, honest, real Torah answer as I see it. It's quite simple. It's the most human thing in the world. He's a person, just like you and me. [00:02:02] Speaker B: And when we suffer at the hands. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Of another person, even if we don't take vengeance, even if we know in the end we're going to work it out and it's going to be fine. Even if, isn't it natural that we. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Want them to feel a little bit. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Of the pain and suffering that we ourselves felt? Isn't it natural? Be honest. [00:02:21] Speaker B: Wouldn't you? [00:02:30] Speaker A: He had every reason. I will rapid fire the picture for you, because I think everyone knows Joseph's story, but he was his father's favorite. He's a dreamer, right? He got this beautiful coat. [00:02:46] Speaker B: He's a little naive, maybe a little tactless in how he shares his prophetic dreams. But he's 17. [00:02:52] Speaker A: He's a kid. His own brothers, his flesh and blood, throw him into a pit. [00:02:58] Speaker B: They want to kill him. Reuben talks them down off that ledge, and instead they're kind enough to sell him into slavery. Then they take his beautiful coat that represents his beauty and his father's love. They pour goat blood all over it. They give it back to his dad and say, sorry about that. And they watch his heart break. Joseph becomes a slave in Egypt. He faithfully serves in Potiphar's house. He's an attractive Young man, he gets hit on by the mistress. He rejects it. He's falsely accused. He's thrown in the dungeon. He stays there. Falsely accused. Unfortunately, not unfortunately. Fortunately, there's some people there. A baker, right? A cupbearer. And he is kind enough to reveal their dreams to them. And the cupbearer gets out and he's elevated. And. And Joseph says, please remember me when you get where you're going in front of Pharaoh, please remember me. I'm languishing down here. And what does it say? At the end of last week's Torah portion? He forgot him. [00:04:11] Speaker A: That's what it says. [00:04:13] Speaker B: The chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph. [00:04:17] Speaker A: He forgot him. Two more years, he sits in a hole. That's how this week's Torah portion opens. Two years later. [00:04:30] Speaker B: Can you imagine? You sitting in the dungeon. You've done nothing wrong. You've been betrayed at every turn. The one person who could really help you simply forget. Finally, Pharaoh has his dreams. The cupbearer all of a sudden remembers. Joseph is brought out. He interprets him. He's elevated to viceroy. He oversees this wonderful project. He marries, he has two sons. [00:05:00] Speaker A: Something you might be interested in about these sons. You listen carefully to what he names these sons. We just said it. Blessing the children. Menashe, from the root word that means to forget. [00:05:17] Speaker B: What had he forgotten? Was he naming his kid after the fact that he'd been forgotten? No, he says nashani. From the root, he says, God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house. I've forgotten. I moved past it. I let it go. But it's more than that. He has another kid. His next kid's name is Ephraim. [00:05:40] Speaker A: For. [00:05:40] Speaker B: From the root, for fruitfulness. What does this mean? God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. You see the progression for Joseph of what's happening here. He's saying it's not just that he forgot the pain. It's not just that things turned out okay. He's saying, it's good here. It's fruitful, it's beautiful. I have these things. Despite everything I've been through, I'm happy. I got peace. I've built a life. He'd done the work, he'd prospered that trauma. He'd moved on. And then. [00:06:19] Speaker A: The past shows up at the door. In chapter 42. Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. He remembered, it says Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed about them. [00:06:41] Speaker B: Is there any more emotional moment? Maybe Abraham and Isaac on the mountain, Maybe. But I think this might be it. If you put yourself there, if you really try to feel what Joseph must have felt in that moment. You're standing there, powerful, wealthy, dressed. Your life has finally come together. You made peace with your past. You named your children, about forgetting it and fruitfulness. And then you look up and there they are. [00:07:22] Speaker A: The faces that were with you in the pit and in the dungeon, through Potiphar's house. The faces that are. [00:07:31] Speaker B: That now haunt probably the edges of your dreams. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Your own brothers who threw you away. [00:07:41] Speaker B: They're bowing before you, just like the dream he had as a boy. The dream that actually started the entire nightmare. Here it is playing out. Their sheaves are bowing to your sheaf. They don't recognize you, but you. You know exactly who they are. [00:08:01] Speaker A: You think of your own life for just a moment. [00:08:06] Speaker B: Have you ever had an incredibly heartbreaking. [00:08:10] Speaker A: Situation with another human being? A relationship, a parent, a friend? [00:08:17] Speaker B: Someone who wounded you so deeply that. [00:08:20] Speaker A: You never, ever want to see them again? [00:08:25] Speaker B: A situation you want to forget forever? You've survived it. You moved on. And even the thought of running into. [00:08:32] Speaker A: Them gives you butterflies on your stomach and not the good, excited, fun kind. [00:08:39] Speaker B: All of the emotion that you felt for that person, whatever it is, betrayal, anger, grief, maybe the difficulty of a love that's somehow still underneath it all. And you've worked so hard to put it behind you, to move past it. And then suddenly there they are and everything comes flooding back. And here's my personal confession. I have those stories. I have one in particular, one incredibly difficult sit where someone. Some people. Someone hurt my. Not just me, my whole family. Badly, deeply. The kind of hurt that changes people forever. And after a number of years, a. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Number of years, I ran into this person. I can still feel that moment so. So uncomfortable, cold. And at the same time, very, very hot. There is. [00:09:47] Speaker B: There's rage, but there was also fear and sadness and a feeling deep inside my gut that I just wanted to run away, but I wanted to fight. [00:09:57] Speaker A: At the same time. And I don't know if you've ever felt that. You may have. Maybe you're feeling it right now as I bring up memories of a situation. But that's what happened to Joseph. That's what happened when he saw them and they didn't see him. And he remembered the dreams and it all flooded back. But the question I asked at the. [00:10:21] Speaker B: Opening, what I'm wrestling with, what he does next. Why and do we. Should we. [00:10:29] Speaker A: Can we judge him for this? [00:10:33] Speaker B: He could have just Fixed it. He could have just revealed himself. He could have done the I am Joseph thing right now. Come on, let's. Brothers, Achi, achim. I'm sorry, that's the plural. Let's move forward, let's be reconciled. That would have been the magnanimous thing to do, right? That's what holy people would do. That's the spiritual right thing to do. But he doesn't. [00:11:00] Speaker A: He puts them through tests, hard tests. [00:11:04] Speaker B: And the question is this revenge? Is this what he's after? Is this what happens when victims get power over their abusers like the Count of Monte Cristo? [00:11:21] Speaker A: Anyone ever read it or seen it? [00:11:23] Speaker B: We love the story. It's justice, man. [00:11:29] Speaker A: We want to see justice. [00:11:31] Speaker B: And is this Joseph's dark side being revealed before our eyes? I don't think so. And there's at least one reason why. Because as you read the narrative, as you look at the text that describes Joseph through this whole thing, again and again, we're told Joseph weeps. He weeps. The brothers are there talking to themselves about their guilt. Alas, we're being punished because of our brother. We saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen. The text says it. And here's Joseph. They're speaking in the language of home, his brothers, he understands it. And all of a sudden he's transported back and he turned from them and he just wept, man. Every year when I read this, every. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Year, I want to just weep with him. I can feel it. There's nothing more human than those tears of Joseph. Nothing more real than when this man, who has carried this for 20 years. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Hears them say, we were wrong. [00:12:56] Speaker A: But you know, what does he do next? [00:12:59] Speaker B: Well, all of that humanity we talk. [00:13:02] Speaker A: About, then Joseph sort of moves into the superhuman. That's beyond most people. [00:13:11] Speaker B: It's not revenge. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Somehow, someway, Joseph had sensitivity for revelation for his brothers, because behind it all, he still loves them. [00:13:22] Speaker B: He loves them enough. He's going to teach them something. He's going to teach them by experience what they did to him. But it's not out of vengeance. It's not out of revenge. It's out of forgiveness. And it is that really human, honest heart's desire that's in all of us. And it's reasonable, maybe necessary, even in reconciliation, to want to need people to truly understand what they did to you. [00:13:58] Speaker A: This is the real life, nitty gritty gritty of the Torah. God didn't tell Joseph to do this. But at the same time, it's also just as important to realize that God. [00:14:14] Speaker B: Did not correct him. He didn't tell him not to. He didn't get a divine scolding. He didn't get a punishment. This is very real. This is how we're wired as human beings. But the key is what Joseph offers on the other side of the ordeal. As I read Rabbi Sacks Corhen Chumash Torah that I recommended a few months ago, in his commentary, he wrote, joseph is putting his brothers through an intensely painful yet morally transformative ordeal of role reversal. He will extend forgiveness. [00:14:55] Speaker A: Ultimately, and amazingly, he will do it. [00:14:59] Speaker B: But they will understand through this ordeal just how much they've been forgiven of. He's creating this situation where they can finally see what they've done, where they can feel what he felt, where they can understand, not intellectually, but down in their bones to feel the emotion of what Joseph has dealt with and lived through. They suspected him of ambition. Now they'll learn it. They plan to sell him as a slave. They'll learn it. They made Joseph go through the grief of. Or Jacob go through the grief of losing a son. Now they're gonna potentially witness that. Again, not their fault. And above all, they treated their brother as a stranger. Now they will learn what it feels like to be treated by a stranger. [00:15:51] Speaker A: By people who love you. But the difference between Joseph and his brothers is that Joseph did have supernatural vision. [00:16:01] Speaker B: He was a dreamer. He saw things. [00:16:03] Speaker A: From the beginning. [00:16:04] Speaker B: He knew. He knew his dreams meant something. He had the ability to see beyond the surface. Yes, he was a punk teenager. But his brothers, on the other hand. [00:16:19] Speaker A: They never saw him. [00:16:22] Speaker B: What did they see when they saw him? [00:16:24] Speaker A: A threat. [00:16:26] Speaker B: Envy. Tattletale, their father's favorite. The proud little brother with the fancy coat. They saw someone who threatened them, threatened their standing, their inheritance, their place. They never saw Joseph, the one who. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Wanted to be loved, who wanted to belong. That's what he wanted. [00:16:53] Speaker B: And standing here before him, 20 years. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Later, ironically, they still don't see him. They see an Egyptian official. [00:17:00] Speaker B: They see a power and a threat. [00:17:03] Speaker A: And authority, but they don't see their brother. But Joseph sees them. [00:17:06] Speaker B: And incredibly, incredibly, after all he's been through, how he sees them is still through the eyes of love. It's not hate, envy, revenge. [00:17:22] Speaker A: It's love. It's hard to believe it. And I ask, is there any story, any account, any biblical happening more humbling for us as human beings? We struggle often to see other people. We see what they've done to us. We see the hurt. [00:17:49] Speaker B: We see through our own lens of pain and our own needs. But to see somebody, really see them with clarity and love, especially when they've wounded you. [00:18:05] Speaker A: That's the work of a lifetime for most of us, my friends. And this story cuts us to the core. It just, it exposes us. How many people in life don't I see so many. I know. How many people do you see through the distorted lens of hurt? And flip that around. How many people don't see you? They see what you represent to them, what you threaten them, what you remind them of. But they don't see you. And Joseph's story is a mirror. And like every good mirror, it points out things that you may not want to see, but it also shows us what's possible. It shows us what we could become if we did the hard work of seeing and forgiving. [00:19:04] Speaker B: How does it work out? [00:19:07] Speaker A: Well, we know how it works out because we have the blessing of hindsight. We have it all written down for us. We've read it. We get the resolution. [00:19:16] Speaker B: Next week, when Joseph finally reveals himself, the brothers are terrified. Now that they truly see him, what do they think? He's going to destroy us. He's going to become what we always feared he's going to be our master, Overlord, destroyer. [00:19:36] Speaker A: And what does Joseph say I am Joseph? [00:19:42] Speaker B: Is my dad still alive? [00:19:48] Speaker A: He hadn't really forgot anything. It's me, guys. His dad still alive. And then he says, come closer. Come closer to me. Don't be afraid of me. I don't think I'm going to be able to make it through this one without. He says, don't be distressed or angry with yourselves, For God sent me here before you to preserve life. And even though you intended to do. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Harm to me, God intended it for good. [00:21:18] Speaker A: I'm sorry. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Can you imagine? Can you imagine being a person who. [00:21:36] Speaker A: Could see life that way? I'm not pretending it didn't hurt, he says, but God meant it for good. That is someone who has done the work. And even on the other side of it, still capable of love, still capable of seeing clearly and listen. Is it any wonder, Is it any wonder that Joseph is the like ultimate pointer to Messiah? He's such the type. Joseph was loved by his father. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers for silver. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Joseph went down to the pit. [00:22:31] Speaker A: He rose to glory. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Joseph became the savior of the world during a time of famine. Joseph's brothers didn't recognize him when they first encountered him. But here's the part that really gets. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Me every single time. And as. [00:22:47] Speaker B: To look at the brothers. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Who betrayed him through eyes of love and Weep over them, longing to be reconciled and to create a path where. [00:22:56] Speaker B: They can repent, to be restored, to test them so that they feel it. Not because he needed revenge, but because he wanted them to truly experience it. [00:23:06] Speaker A: So that they could be healed. But they had to admit. They had to feel that, and that's a reasonable thing that he did. And when they finally came to him in fear, Come closer. Don't be afraid. I know what you did. I've always known you and I love you anyway. And listen, for all this talk about if you don't pray a prayer, you're going to go burn in hell. And you know all this stuff, that's the gospel. [00:23:46] Speaker B: That's the good news. [00:23:51] Speaker A: That's it. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeshua looks at us in all the ways that we've betrayed him, ignored him, rejected him, sold him out for our own comfort, our own status, our own security, whatever it is. And he sees us through eyes of love, and he knows us and he's always known us. Not just the parts we're proud of, but the parts we hide, the envy, the things we don't want anyone to see, the way we refuse to really see other people because it's uncomfortable, challenging. And all Yeshua says to us is, come closer. [00:24:30] Speaker A: Don't be afraid. I know what you've done. And I love you. Anyway, As I typed those words, this is the point. I thought that I would actually lose my cool. [00:24:44] Speaker B: Thankfully, I already got that out of the way. [00:24:47] Speaker A: But as I typed those words, I just felt like Joseph. And I just put my head down on my desk and I just cried for Joseph and for us to be loved, to be seen in such a way. It's a struggle to get to that place, to be able to look someone in the eye, someone who hurt you, someone who betrayed you, threw you in the pit, and not just forgive them intellectually with the right word words, but to actually feel it, to weep over it. [00:25:26] Speaker B: But like so many things, you know, I don't know. [00:25:28] Speaker A: I don't know if I'll ever get there. I want to get there. I want to be able to do that. But like so many other things, it puts a choice in front of us. We have a choice. [00:25:39] Speaker B: We can be the brothers or we can be Joseph. We can go through life seeing people through distorted lenses of our own insecurities and unhealed wounds. We can refuse to really see, or we can hard, painful, beautiful work of. [00:25:54] Speaker A: Learning to see clearly. It's a harder road, I know, for some people who have been hurt much worse than others, I understand that. I am not minimizing it to forgive. Not because what they did was okay, but because holding onto it is a poison that kills us. And it just starts with the willingness to open that part of your heart that Joseph had. I want that life. I do. I want to be the kind of person who can look back on the worst things that have happened and say. [00:26:31] Speaker B: You meant it for harm, but God. [00:26:33] Speaker A: Meant it for good. [00:26:34] Speaker B: And I know that. I know that statement has been misused in people who are victims of abuse. And every other thing to say, oh, no, that was good for you to get molested. That's not what I'm talking about. [00:26:50] Speaker A: That's a ridiculous thing to say. What I'm saying is that if you hold on often, you get to see. [00:27:07] Speaker B: That God was with you and can take you. [00:27:15] Speaker A: I would not be talking with you right now were it not for the situation in which I went through with my family. It brought me here. But it is a lifelong practice. I'm working on it. I'm sure we all are. And some days are better than others. And some days we can see clearly, and some days, well, we can't. But that's the journey. [00:27:48] Speaker B: That's the work. Joseph didn't get there overnight. He had 20 years to think about it. And you know what? I can imagine how many times, sitting in the dark in a cave pit, I can imagine how many times he thought, if I ever get the chance. [00:28:07] Speaker A: To have you ever done that, if. [00:28:10] Speaker B: I ever see that person, I will. [00:28:15] Speaker A: Fill in the blank. But when it hit, he rose to the occasion. He rose. [00:28:27] Speaker B: I'm sure he had prepared. [00:28:32] Speaker A: But he created this space and this process, and he did it. And isn't that the life we want? Here's what the text shows us on the other side of forgiveness with such an unbelievable joy for Joseph. [00:28:57] Speaker B: He did it. [00:28:59] Speaker A: He was right with his brothers. He was seen by them. He got to see his father again. He had his family come. [00:29:07] Speaker B: He was united. The portion ends with Jacob coming down from Egypt. The families reunited. [00:29:12] Speaker A: There's provision, there's reconciliation, there's joy. [00:29:15] Speaker B: And none of it happened without the. [00:29:18] Speaker A: Seemingly impossible work that he did to get to that point. And if we miss how miraculous Joseph is, how superhuman his love is, we will miss the greatest story we can take from this thing. Withholding forgiveness, as I've said so often during forgiveness messages and high holiday messages, is like drinking poison and expecting it's going to kill the other person. It doesn't work that way. It eats your insights. It doesn't hurt them, but it does keep us from living fully, from experiencing joy. That's on the other side. And Joseph shows us another way. And ultimately it all points so beautifully to Messiah, our teacher, our inspiration, the one who truly, truly sees beyond those parts of us that we're not proud of and welcomes us, just as Joseph welcomed his brothers. And so I want to invite you, as we leave, to this invitation. If there is someone in your life that you're really not seeing or viewing through a lens of envy or hurt or fear or any other thing, if there is someone who has wounded you and you're holding onto that, nursing it, using it as a reason to punish. [00:30:57] Speaker B: Yourself unknowingly or to hold reconciliation at. [00:31:01] Speaker A: Arm'S length, is there a reconciliation that's waiting for you on the other side of some very difficult process that you're afraid to step into or too hurt to step into any of those things? I'm telling you that it's worth it. Because on the other side of it is the ability hopefully to be seen and to see the better life, the more abundant life that our Messiah promised us. The life of fruitfulness in the land, even if we have been afflicted in our land, the life where we can look back and say they meant it for harm. But God did good to me, even through you. I see your faces and that's what makes me want to cry, Because I see such a beautiful room of humans who have things that they have to deal with. And I wish it wasn't that way. But it can be great. That's the life Joseph found. [00:32:32] Speaker B: It took a while. [00:32:34] Speaker A: It was hard work. He made the choice. Let's choose it. Let's learn to see. Let's have the vision of Joseph and ultimately the vision of Yeshua. Shabbat Shalom. [00:32:54] Speaker C: I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you're subscribed to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.