Category: Genesis

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Genesis 40 before reading the devotional below.

As someone who enjoys studying both psychology and the Bible, dream analysis is a fascinating realm. Joseph, still in prison, has the chance to meet two high-ranking officials in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s court: the chief cup-bearer and the chief baker. They have been thrown into prison for offending Pharaoh, and both have dreams that they do not understand. Joseph is confident in his connection to God and offers to interpret the dreams supernaturally. One is good news, the other quite bad. In the end, both the dreams come true.

Joseph had hoped that when the cup-bearer’s positive dream came true, he would put in a good word with Pharaoh to help Joseph get out of prison. Sadly, the cup-bearer forgets all about Joseph. We’ll read more about this story in tomorrow’s chapter, but that failure to remember Joseph keeps him in prison for two more years. It’s a half a sentence when we read the story, but who knows what Joseph went through during that two year period. Was he discouraged or confident in God’s coming rescue? We’ll never know…

Here’s your freedom for today:

People may forget about you, but God never will.

Joseph places a tiny bit of hope in the cup-bearer when he asks for a favor. Although that does help him down the road, he was ultimately let down by that man. He was forgotten. Locked away and unimportant to society. In the end, he’s only remembered because his dream interpretation skills are needed once again. There was absolutely no consideration for Joseph as a human being on the part of the cup-bearer. Sadly, humans will fail us. The good news is that God never will. He has never forgotten you for one second of your life, and he didn’t forget about Joseph either. He lined everything up to make sure Joseph rose to the top, though there’s no arguing he gave Joseph the easy road to get there. Even when your earthly situation makes you feel lost and forgotten, God is working things out in the midst of the waiting.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Genesis 39 before reading the devotional below.

Today we tune back into Joseph’s life now that he has been traded by his brothers as a slave. It just so happens that the head of the royal guard in Egypt buys Joseph, so he’s immediately in proximity to royalty. I wonder if it occured to Joseph that this was the path towards the visions he had received from God. The Bible doesn’t tell us his thoughts, but it does say that God was with him and blessed him. Even better than the “midas touch.”

Joseph’s a quality guy, and his owner gives him more and more responsibilities and luxuries. He’s so outstanding that he refuses to sleep with the slave owner’s wife who seduces him and lies about it. Straight to prison for Joseph. Anyone would be reasonably discouraged by this point, but the Bible once again says that God was with Joseph in prison and gave him favor with the prison guard. God’s rising him back to the top once again.

Here’s your freedom for today:

Supernatural success is not limited by your natural abilities.

The Bible emphasizes multiple times in this chapter that God was giving Joseph success. It doesn’t say, “Joseph was a really talented guy and everyone noticed.” It says, “God was with him and gave him success.” Period. Full stop. God is doing it. Where is the hand of God at work in your life? Are you noticing it? As a slave or in prison, Joseph could have jumped right into despair and self-pity. He could have assumed God left him. Or he could have swung the other way and given himself a solid pat on the back for his awesome rise to the top. He would have been wrong either way. Which way do you tend to swing?

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Genesis 38 before reading the devotional below.

Sex is complicated, and today’s chapter has a lot of messed up stuff in it. First of all, Judah marries a Canaanite woman, showing his willingness to stray to other gods. Then, Judah’s son grows up and becomes so wicked that God kills him. The woman he was supposed to marry, Tamar, would by custom become the wife of the next brother in line. Judah’s second son wasn’t too keen on that, so he practiced ancient birth control methods to avoid getting her pregnant. God saw that as evil and killed him too.

Tamar is fed up at this point and takes matters into her own hands. She dresses up as a prostitute and Judah approaches her and sleeps with her. Then in an all-too-common, blame-the-woman scenario, Tamar becomes pregnant and Judah is outraged that she was prostituting herself (until he is found out to be the one that slept with her). Tamar gives birth to twins.

Here’s your freedom for today:

God brings evil to light to vindicate the oppressed.

It is amazing to me just how long patriarchal systems have lasted. Thousands of years later in a totally different culture, we still see men sexually exploiting women and blaming them for being promiscuous. Judah doesn’t even consider confessing until he gets caught with the closest they had to DNA evidence. But in this story God kills two wicked men and sees to it that Tamar gets to have children, one of whom is noted to be the ancestor of Boaz in the book of Ruth. This line extends all the way to Jesus himself, as we see from the geneology in Matthew 1. God was setting up a long but important redemption process and making sure that the wrongs that were done to Tamar would not erase her from Israel’s history.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Genesis 37 before reading the devotional below.

If you find yourself humming Broadway tunes when you read this chapter, you know you’ve gotten to the part in the Bible where Joseph gets his amazing technicolor dreamcoat. (I’m singing “Jacob and Sons” right now…) Broadway isn’t known for getting all the biblical details right, so let’s lean in to what the Bible actually tells us about Jacob, Joseph, and the whole family of Israel.

We see some serious sibling rivalry in this chapter, and Joseph doesn’t make it any better by being presumptuous and arrogant. Sometimes even when you get a word or dream from God you should keep it to yourself. Even his father thought he was being a bit brash to tell everyone that his father and brothers would bow to him someday — although it was true. Joseph is sold into slavery and this story is the perfect example of how earthly circumstances cannot always show us what God is doing.

Here’s your freedom for today:

God has a plan for your life and will see it to completion.

God gave Joseph a dream of power and royalty. That was absolutely where God was taking him. But when his brothers sell him to slave traders he might have felt that God’s plan was getting disrupted. Quite the opposite! God’s plan was just beginning. Joseph would never have been in a position of royalty had he not be sold by his brothers. We can’t assume when things fall apart that God stopped working or his plan is thrown off course. If you’ve given your life to God, you can trust that he is leading you and will bring you exactly where you need to go. He’ll even use your weakness and mistakes to get you there.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Genesis 36 before reading the devotional below.

Today’s chapter might seem like one of those boring lists of names again, but right from the start I’m fascinated to connect some dots I never put together before. The descendents of Esau are known as the Edomites, which in all my years of Bible reading I had never noticed. It’s amazing how many details I catch having to write these devotionals instead of my eyes skimming the verses. If you want to read more about the Edomites, here’s a link of other places they show up in the Bible. (Spoiler alert: they become enemies of Israel.)

We can see from today’s chapter where Esau and his descendants started going wrong. He married Canaanite women. Recall from Genesis 28:6-9 that Esau was well aware his father did not approve of marrying Canaanite women because they worshiped false gods. Jacob has just rid his entire household of these idols. Esau had already married descendents of Ishmael, and he adds to his clan by marrying two Canaanites. In Jeremiah 9:25-26, God calls the Edomites a “pagan nation” who may be circumsized outwardly (as they would likely be since they were Abraham’s descendents) but had strayed far from the heart of God.

Here’s your freedom for today:

Freedom is found when your insides match your outsides.

God really hates hypocrites. And if you think that he’s somehow satisfied by a fleshly circumsicion, then you don’t know the God of the Bible very well. He wants your outsides to reflect what’s going on inside your heart. He’s not one for show and all his outward laws and systems were really all about heart. It’s like he’s saying, “Show me that your heart is for me by performing this symbolic act,” rather than, “You’re all set if you just pay the right physical price.” God’s not running a club that you can bribe to get into. It’s free already so bribery doesn’t make any sense. He’s looking for hearts that are seeking him. Everything else follows. Esau strayed from that and his descendents became like all the other pagans — they didn’t know the heart of God at all.