The dichotomy of the cloak of favor –
the story of Joseph and the technicolor dreamcoat.
I really hate the musical...any
dream will do is not the moral of the story...the dream isn't even
the focus of the story...but I digress.
God's favor is a mysterious thing.
Joseph had it from God and from his parents. It was expressed in a
multicolored tunic made for him especially by his father Israel
(Jacob), and from God by the dream that someday he would indeed rule
over his family. One would think that both of these were good things.
To have the favor of God and man would seem to us to be a
happily-ever-after story. All would be well and go well for Joseph,
right? WRONG! That garment caused his brothers to solidify their
contempt for him, and the dream foretold the result, but not the
process, of what God was going to do in his life. So favor does not
equal ease, peace, and comfort. It is often the hard path to the top. Jesus had the favor of God and man, and that story also led to great suffering before the work of God was accomplished.
So Joseph has the garment of
favor...and he is stripped of it by those who are jealous of him. He
is thrown in the pit and sold into slavery, and the garment was
dipped in blood and presented to his father as a symbol of his death.
He was not really dead, but it was thought he was. The symbol of
favor became the symbol of death in his father's eyes. Jacob jumped
to conclusions, but he saw his son as dead. It was in reality a
symbol of the hatred of the brothers...they wanted to kill him, but
their greed got in the way of his actually dying. But like all of us,
the blood of the death of a substitute needed to take place for the
scriptures to be fulfilled. The death of something in Joseph's place, and
in our place, needed to happen for the eventual cleansing of the
sinners here on earth.
Jacob exchanged his garments for
sackcloth, and the garment of favor became a curse in his heart.
The next garment Joseph had was given
to him by his master in Egypt, and that one, too, was stripped away
from him, this time by a woman of ill-repute, his boss's wife. He
left that one in her hand as he fled temptation and ill-repute
himself, only to have it also become an unjust witness against him.
God would not let him keep the position of a slave. But was the
position of a prisoner better? The downward spiral of Joseph's life
must have left his head reeling! How could God's favor take him so
low?
On to the jail, wearing jail-bird
clothes. This was the first time it says he changed his own clothes,
and that was so he could appear before Pharaoh himself! This was a
small upgrade. He shaved and put on clothes that did not smell of
jail. Once he told Pharaoh what God had in mind for the next 7 years,
Pharaoh clothed him in fine garments and gold jewelry! Well, that
was more like it, right? Joseph was ruler over Egypt under Pharaoh!
But these were the work clothes to fulfill the promise of God's favor
that continually followed him. Because once God put him there, all
powerful and mighty as Joseph was, his heart had to sink when the
brothers showed up in town looking for food. He used their cloth
sacks to work repentance in their lives, to bring Benjamin to his
presence, and to cause them to tear their own clothes in grief and
mourning. And that is when the dream came true, when the favor of God
allowed him to spread that favor to his brothers in the form of new
garments to replace their garments of mourning and repentance, and
bestow on Benjamin more garments of favor without them getting
jealous this time of a brother better loved. They had stripped him, but he turned around and
clothed them, showing them their brotherhood was eternal and their
favor unmerited.
This story in cloth foreshadows the
work of Christ in our lives. God shows us His favor, strips us of any
pretension that we have earned it, takes us through a purging of our
status, strength, power, and reputation, but He never takes that
presence or favor away. Others can see it, and some respond to it
rightly, some wrongly, and some are enticed by it the wrong way and
we have to run. Once the purging is done, He continues with the plan
of building us up, and seldom the way we think. He thought the
cup bearer would get him out of jail, but that hope was dashed. It
took God planting something in Pharaoh's life that would not only get
Joseph out of jail, but make him useful in God's hands for bringing
the rest of the chosen back into a right relationship with him and
with God.
If you are in the process of being
stripped, don't lose heart. God's favor has not been lifted. His plan
is mysteriously different than ours. What appears to us to be for our
harm is often for not only our good, but for the good of those we
love the most as well. Waiting for God to show us the end of the
story, that is our job...to be faithful, useful, and hopeful in the
face of searing pain and loss, while God still shapes our destiny.
Accepting that is often hard, but cooperating with it will bring
blessing in the end. Be the one God is stripping and not the
strippers of jealousy, wrath, and anger, or lust and evil desires.
Let God humble you so that He can raise you up. Joseph couldn't crawl
out of the pit, free himself from slavery, or break out of the jail cell. God had to
release him from each of those situations, and each seemed worse than
the one before. But God never left Joseph, and Joseph never fought
the Spirit of God, but worked faithfully to become one who could end
up saving not only himself, but millions. Take heart and accept
whatever garment He has you in today, for tomorrow's garments will
change, and all garments He dresses you in and strips you of fulfill the role you play in the great story of God's
work in the lives of those on whom His favor rests.
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