The Book of Beginnings is sometimes mysterious and always marvelous in its depiction of the One to Come… of Jesus.
After sin fractured the innocence of Eden, God promised the Savior. Though He would be smitten, He would victoriously crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).
Abel, the second son of Adam (Genesis 4), foreshadowed Jesus. Though it cost him his life, he obediently offered the blood sacrifice.
Noah looked forward to the coming Savior, building the ark and preparing for the unique way to salvation (Genesis 6-7).
In Melchizedek (Genesis 14) we glimpse Jesus, the High Priest, worthy of our worship.
And Abraham and Isaac displayed perfect obedience as God provided the substitutionary sacrifice (Genesis 22), “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
But, it seems to me, that Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob, most vividly points to Jesus.
Much of the final fourteen chapters of Genesis are devoted to his story, the story of one born to mirror the life of Christ.
Arthur W. Pink, the nineteenth and twentieth century English scholar, lists 101 ways that Joseph foreshadows Jesus. We won’t be so thorough, but we’ll see enough to be amazed at God’s miraculous story. In my next four blogs we’ll examine Joseph, the son, the slave, the seer, and the savior. For now, let me give you a taste of what’s to come.
Like Jesus, Jospeh was the most-loved son of his father (Genesis 37:3). One can almost imagine Jacob introducing Jospeh to the new neighbors, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
And like Jesus, Joseph was sent by his father to find his brothers. Obediently, “He came to seek” (Luke 19:10) his brothers, but they rejected him and plotted to kill him (Genesis 37:12-18).
Assuming that he would become just a distant memory, the angry and vengeful brothers threw Joseph into a pit (Genesis 37:23-28). Amazingly, he came out of the ground, alive!
Years later, at the age of thirty (Genesis 41:46), Joseph began his service to the king. And at thirty, Jesus began His ministry (Luke 3:23) and became the dispenser of the Bread of Life (Genesis 41:53-57; John 6:35).
“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).
Comments