31. Yeshua in the Life of Joseph

Hopefully these meditations are helping you to see that God does everything through His eternal living, creative Word. So the Word is being revealed throughout all of Genesis. God and His Word are both revealed in Scripture. To know one is to know the other for they are one in all things. So disciples must realize that when they see God’s Word revealed, their Master Yeshua is being revealed, for He is God’s living Word (John 1:1-5). He is revealed in the rest of the Torah…and in all the books of the prophets…and the Wisdom writings of the Tanach (Old Testament), and of course in every book of the New Testament.

After seeing Yeshua appear so much in Genesis, it shouldn’t shock us to see Him in all the lives of the people and situations chronicled in the Bible’s other books. And so by the time He appears on Earth as Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth, we should already know Him very well. That prior knowledge will help us understand who He really is and what He is really saying and doing in the Gospels and beyond. All of God’s revelation comes through and is fulfilled by…Him. That should make us aware that His awesome creative, sustaining presence abides and works in every created thing and creature and event in the universe! Torah lets us see this. And that helps us plumb the depths of the significance embedded within the scathing response Yeshua made to some of His Torah-studying, Tradition-observing Jewish brothers who disbelieved and rejected Him:

“You search the Scriptures (the Torah) because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men; but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:39-47 Emphasis added.)

This is very deep revelation! Those men were learned and deeply religious…but still, unbelieving. They were so close to God’s living Truth. They knew a lot about the written Word of God…but yet their minds and hearts were far away from His living Word, their Creator and Redeemer. So they didn’t know God as He really is; they remained, ‘decapitated’.

Yeshua brought this out by saying something that must have jarred and shocked them tremendously. And it shocks many of today’s Jewish and non-Jewish people as well. What is so shocking? Well, Yeshua equated His own person with the revelation contained in the writings of Moses! And He equated the writings of Moses, to Himself! Ponder that! He was saying, “I AM the Living Torah that My Father reveals in the written Torah!” Disciples should really take this to heart. He was piercing those men with these facts:

‘If you really understood the writings of Moses, you’d know that My Father gave you the Torah so that you could know Me! Moses revealed what My Father sent Me to be and to do…to the world…in the world…and for the world…If you knew My Father and belonged to Him, His Holy Spirit would enable you to grasp what Moses said and you would recognize, embrace and serve Me now that I have come into your midst! I AM the Living Torah spoken to you by God, My Father! Moses wrote about Me so you would be sure to recognize and embrace Me now that I stand before you!’

Disciples reverence God’s Word, exactly as He chose to reveal it

If you are Yeshua’s disciple, you would be very wise…and obedient…to develop a great reverence in your heart for the first five books of the Bible. Your job is to know our Master intimately, authentically and precisely. If Moses really did reveal Him in the written Torah, then He truly is The Living Torah! So do your best to understand Moses with accuracy and authentic precision. If you do, you will see more clearly that Moses was preparing the way for…and announcing…Yeshua, our Master! Knowing this enables you to know our Lord exactly as Father chose to reveal Him, instead of having to settle for the erroneous ways in which centuries of Torah-avoiding men have continued to ‘morph’ Him into their own image…according to what is in their own imaginations!

Read the stern warnings Moses gives to Israel in Deuteronomy 13 and 18:15-22. If Moses was truly writing about our Master, you will see that He was making sure Israel would be able to recognize Him as the true Messiah and they would know that His New Covenant apostles and disciples would be the true God-sent Israelite Remnant, the messengers God would send to the world in the future. And, thanks to your knowledge of Moses, you would know that our Master was always perfectly aligned with all that Moses wrote about Him in the Torah and that He came here to fulfill it!

And, if you know Moses, you know exactly what your Master is here to do and what you can expect from Him as He abides and works within you! You’ll know He came to be the covering God intends to put over the Sin-corrupted nakedness of all humanity. You’ll know we are covered by believing everything He reveals and by obeying every command He gives that applies to us personally. And you also know that our Master is here to make sure Israel will eventually be able to fulfill everything Moses wrote and promised about her in the future.

So if we receive our Master as His Father has revealed Him, His perfect obedience will work in us and move us, from within, to obey God and meet His perfect standards according to the Scriptures. God’s Word will do all of this from within us…in our name. The Word is here to recover His image and likeness that He lost when Adam and Eve fell into Sin. And the nature of His image and likeness is revealed in the Torah of Moses. When we know what the Holy Spirit moved Moses to write, we can know how awesome and perfect our indwelling Lord and Master is. He is the Messiah of Israel and we can know Him with authentic Scriptural precision.

And we will also know ourselves and our needs and our God-given purpose. We will know that we are designed and meant to live and operate as one with God’s living Word! The Word became flesh and identified with us so closely that we can be as one with Him…in the Israelite matrix in which and by which He is revealed. The Messiah lives and works within us to include us within that matrix as He fulfills everything that was written about Him and promised through Him in it, through the Torah. We can be one with God’s Word and His Israel, as soon as we realize that He has already spiritually identified and bonded Himself to us! When we realize this, we can mentally and emotionally bond and identify with Him, just as much as He has already identified and bonded with us. And Torah lets us know exactly what God is grafting us into.

Filled and empowered by the Spirit Himself

Because the Word lives and operates within His true disciples, His Spirit moves and empowers them to receive and share in Yeshua’s righteous holiness and loving obedience to His Father. His obedience works in us and becomes our obedience too, thus fulfilling everything God requires of the human race! He covers our Sin-corrupted ‘nakedness’ by His own Perfectly obedient, Righteous Life. He becomes our ‘Wedding Garment,’ making us beautiful in God’s sight and acceptable in His Presence! This is the only way fallen flesh can be made right with God. Knowing this shows us the seriousness with which we should approach Torah and what it is meant to bring forward to each generation, including ours. Everything Torah reveals about God, and us, is fulfilled and brought together in us and through us by God’s Word –our indwelling Master! When we look for Him in the Torah, we see Him fulfilling His Father’s will, on our behalf. And as we make our way through this strife-ridden, confusing world that is filled with so many demonic lies, errors, delusions and traps, we can discern with precision what truly is from God and what is alien and deceptive and false. We will be able to recognize what is devised by the erroneous self-made religious traditions of Torah-bypassing people. The religious men Yeshua scolded in the above text idolized man-made traditions and placed them above what God gave in His Torah! So if you have any doubt about where our Master stands on this issue, notice what else He said to His disciples:

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets (the rest of the Hebrew Tanach, or Old Testament); I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law (Torah) until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps (obeys) and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees (that wallow in the ever-increasing traditions of men), you will not enter the kingdom of heaven!” (Matthew 5:17-20 Amplification and emphasis added.)

“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness. (Torah-lessness)’” (Matthew 7:22-23 Amplification added.)

Yeshua’s scathing response to His opponents exposed the true attitude of their hearts toward God’s living Word. They gave lip service to the written Torah and specialized in obeying thousands of extra man-made rules and traditions, but they lacked understanding concerning the true spirit of the God-given commandments written in God’s Torah. Yeshua was and is, the True Righteousness of God. And the Torah of Moses revealed Him. So this is why He said to them, in so many words:

‘If you were open to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and instruction, My Father’s Love would pierce your hearts and you would truly understand Torah’s purpose. And if you understood Torah, you would recognize Me as I live in your midst. You would realize I am the one Moses was revealing. You would recognize and receive Me just as My disciples do and see Me as The Fulfillment of My Father’s Love-generating Scriptures. My loving works and teachings truly interpret and fulfill what Moses wrote! If you knew God, you would realize that I, His living Word, stand before you, fulfilling everything Moses said about Me. You would know that I appeared to Abraham at Mamre, and that I am ‘Jacob’s Ladder.’ I spoke to Moses from the burning bush and appeared to Joshua as Captain of the Lord’s Host. And now I stand before you and yet, you turn away. You cling to man-made religious traditions instead. You are Headless and clueless! Because you do not take Moses’ words to heart, you are blind to Me. Woe to you who fail to realize the day of your visitation! You are rejecting God at this critical moment of your lives even as He tries to pierce, penetrate and impregnate your hearts with His Life-giving Word!’

The living Word is the Living Torah. And He tells us who live in His New Covenant era that God intends to reveal His living Torah from within our very lives! This is why in John’s Book of Revelation, Yeshua gives an equally scathing warning to the arrogant, empty self-sufficient New Covenant congregation of so-called ‘believers’ in Laodicea:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He, who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 3:20-22)

Do you believe the Jewish apostle and Messianic rabbi, John, and what he wrote in his Gospel and in the Book of Revelation? If you do, you’ll realize that God’s living Word is asking: ‘What is in your hearts that prevents you from being able to recognize Me in the Torah of Moses?’ And, ‘What is in your hearts that forces Me to remain outside of you when I have come to be your indwelling Life…to live inside of you and reveal My Holiness and Righteousness through your flesh! Why must I keep knocking on the doors of your hearts, waiting for you to open up and let Me in? Until you do receive Me, you are violating Deuteronomy 6:4-9! And you and I cannot live and work as one, nor can I do my Father’s will in your name, and you cannot serve as My image and likeness!”

The way we respond to God’s living and written Word in our hearts determines whether or not God is free to reveal His Word to us, in us and through us. And the way we respond to the Torah of Moses, reveals whether or not we really and truly know our Master with God-given authenticity and accuracy. When we see this, many of us will have to repent of our habitual arrogant negative attitudes toward the Resurrection Presence of our Master with whom we refuse to bond, and we will also have to repent of ignoring God’s Torah by which He reveals His beloved Son to us.

God’s Word stands forever, exactly as it was originally given

Here’s something else we need to realize: our Jewish Master and His Jewish disciples were not sent to ignore or replace what God had already given to Israel. They did not come to start a new religion. They were devoted heart and soul to Israel and her God-given spiritual commonwealth. They were part of Israel’s faithful New Covenant remnant in the first century…true Orthodox Jews that wholeheartedly embraced, lived and accurately interpreted and taught the Torah in all of its Fullness. Because they did what God required in the Torah, they proved that their hearts were truly and fully ‘circumcised.’ They were completed, fulfilled New Covenant Israelites. God’s living Word succeeded in bringing forward to them and putting into them, everything that was lost by the fall of Adam in the Garden. And it was their job to ‘disciple the Gentiles’ (See Matthew 28:18-20), that is, to teach the whole world to obey everything the Master had commanded them to obey and to live with Him, as they had been taught to live with Him and from Him.

Messiah revealed and fulfilled the Torah’s Truth

The ways in which Yeshua and His faithful apostles lived and taught had to align perfectly with the warning guidelines Moses gave in Deuteronomy 13. That chapter told Israel how to judge, assess and respond to anyone in the future who would claim to be a prophet, teacher or the Messiah. In that sense, Moses was revealing and endorsing Yeshua and His New Covenant disciples because they were the ones that lined up perfectly with all that Moses had written. The laments against Israel’s disobedience that all the prophets were sent to deliver did not apply to Yeshua and His faithful disciples. They were the example of what Torah had always advocated – they were God’s True Israel and what Abraham’s Family was always meant to be to the rest of the world! And disciples that are being trained to operate in the Last Days must be well aware of this.

Yeshua proved to be the true, Torah-fulfilling Messiah! And His contemporary disciples proved to be Torah-compliant, God-sent New Covenant prophets and teachers. Their lives and teachings and writings carried forward with great faithfulness and accuracy everything God had revealed and promised in His Torah. That’s why the Holy Spirit was able to empower them to recognize and embrace their Messiah when He appeared. They understood the true purpose of the Torah’s revelation that foretold Him and they aligned with the commandments that expressed His Righteousness (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:22-28). So they were able to recognize Him as their Lord and Messiah, while many around them could not. They ushered in Israel’s New Covenant with God, which was the ultimate fulfillment of God’s Covenant promises to Abraham and his family. And God endorsed and testified to who they were and what they said and did, with awesome Authority and Power! (See, for example, Acts 1-5.)

So I hope that from this you will realize that Torah is the granite-solid, everlasting foundation of our Faith! It is indispensible for every generation and every human heart that will truly be ‘circumcised.’ It is a disastrous blunder to dismiss Torah as something passé and irrelevant. That is a demonic delusion that knocks God’s ‘Faith House’ off of its granite-solid God-given Foundation (Matthew 7:24-29)! The Serpent loves to get men to dismiss Torah as a mere legalistic conglomeration of ‘Old Testament Jewish Traditions.’ But Beloved, it is much more than that! It is The Tree of Life for the human race! And Yeshua, the living Word of God, is its awesome, Life-giving Fruit!

Torah, unpacked… is so much more than we expected…

The Hebrew word ‘Torah’ is packed with meaning and significance that our common translation (‘The Law’) cannot possibly convey. Torah contains the idea of ‘teaching’ and ‘instruction’ and ‘training’ and ‘guidance’ in addition to revealing God’s perfect eternal nature, character, disposition and standards of righteousness. All this additional meaning is packed into that one word – ‘Torah.’ To assume that the basic Self-revelation of God portion of Scripture is irrelevant and unnecessary today, misses most of the depth of meaning, significance and spiritual benefit God has embedded within all of Scripture concerning His Son! (See 2 Timothy 3:16-17. In the day of Yeshua and His apostles, the Tanach (Old Testament) was the only Scripture they had!) So if we try to know Yeshua apart from Torah’s foundational revelation, we end up with a grossly mangled Bible and a vast religious buffet filled with countless skewed, twisted, anachronistic and grossly erroneous impressions and ideas.

In these Follow Me meditations on Genesis, I have intended to help impart a realization of how much Yeshua appears throughout that book. But actually, we’ve only scratched the surface of the depths of revelation we still have not explored. But perhaps now you will at least be able to see how indispensible Genesis and the rest of the Torah are for properly understanding and relating to our Lord. Without Torah, we’ll never understand the significance of what John says when He begins his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” (John 1:1) We won’t realize that since the fall, God’s Word has been bringing God’s Salvation and Redemption forward to restore it to each generation. God is bringing all of Creation back under His Word’s supreme, eternal Authority and Supremacy, just as it was before the fall! Without Torah, we can’t know the nature of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as He really is, or what He intends to do with the world. Without Torah we won’t know that God never changes and that everything He revealed and established in the beginning is, even now, in the process of being regenerated and restored and fulfilled to perfection, by His living Word and Holy Spirit.

Hopefully you will see Torah as a God-given treasure trove from whose depths we can ‘mine’ and excavate an authentic knowledge of our Master. It reveals Him…in and through the lives of His faithful disciples who God chose to include for our instruction. When God created the universe and the earth and all the creatures, including the first two humans, He was revealing the awesome authority and creativity of His living Word. When He sent His Word to cover the nakedness of the first two humans, He was revealing our Master Yeshua – to be the Eternal Passover Lamb of God covering us all…in a pre-incarnation revelation of God’s Eternal Redemption.

What is revealed of the Word in the lives of the people mentioned in Genesis and the rest of the Torah shows us what He is here to be and do for all of us. Torah reveals everything that God gives and requires. It reveals that since we can’t meet God’s standards by our own efforts, we have to know the one God has sent to fulfill everything in our place and in our name. Torah shows us that God’s Word keeps bringing His Father’s Salvation forward into each succeeding generation. Yeshua is the Salvation that God keeps bringing forward…into the lives of fallen Adam, Eve, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He keeps doing this for the sake of all of us.

This is why He advanced Salvation into the life and circumstances of Joseph. Joseph helps us know more about what Yeshua is here to be and to reveal to, in and through us! What Yeshua once did through Joseph on a regional scale, He is now doing on a world-wide universal scale! But whatever He does, will always be done first in and through His chosen people…God’s beloved Israel.

Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, ‘Please listen to this dream which I have had; for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.’ Then his brothers said to him, ‘Are you actually going to reign over us? Or are you really going to rule over us?’ So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

Now he had still another dream, and related it to his brothers, and said, ‘Lo, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.’ He related it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, ‘What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?’ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.” (Genesis 37:5-12)

Notice Jacob’s future-looking perspective as he reacted to Joseph’s dream. He apparently understood the true future significance of what Joseph saw. His beloved Rachel, Joseph’s mother, was dead. So why did Jacob include her in his response to Joseph: ‘Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you…?’

And after Joseph ended up in Egypt, Genesis adds this about him later on:

“Now his master (Potiphar) saw that the Lord was with him (Joseph) and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his (the Gentile’s) sight and became his personal servant; and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he owned he put in his charge. It came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house and over all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house on account of Joseph; thus the Lord’s blessing was upon all that he owned, in the house and in the field. So he left everything he owned in Joseph’s charge; and with him there he did not concern himself with anything except the food which he ate.” (Genesis 39:3-6 Emphasis added.)

“Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. It came about after these events that his master’s wife looked with desire at Joseph, and she said, ‘Lie with me.’ But he refused and said to his master’s wife, ‘Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge. There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil and sin against God? As she spoke to Joseph day after day, he did not listen to her to lie beside her or be with her. Now it happened one day that he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the household was there inside. She caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me!’ And he left his garment in her hand and fled, and went outside.” (Genesis 39:6b-12 Emphasis added.)

“So Joseph’s master took him and put him into the jail, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined; and he was there in the jail. But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. The chief jailer committed to Joseph’s charge all the prisoners who were in the jail; so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it. The chief jailer did not supervise anything under Joseph’s charge because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper.” (Genesis 39:20-23 Emphasis added.)

Messianic Revelation

Pay attention to all the similarities between Joseph and our Master, Yeshua. In Joseph, you see prophetic revelations of God’s living Word who was to become flesh and live on Earth. Through Joseph, God’s Word made it possible for Israel to survive so that later, He Himself could appear in the flesh as Messiah Yeshua! Both Joseph and Yeshua are of the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Each is the beloved son of his father. Both are chosen by God to save and provide for His chosen people. Both are misunderstood and despised by their Jewish brothers. The human lives of both were, in a real sense, ‘killed.’ Both were put into the ground for a time. Both were raised from the ground. Both were taken into a new life by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit places them in their risen state, into the midst of pagan Gentile peoples. The God-given ‘giftings’ of both are recognized and given their proper place and honor not by their Jewish brothers, but by Gentiles! Although both are rejected by their own people, and both are falsely accused of wrongdoing, God sees to it that both rise to supreme positions of authority in the pagan Gentile world. God continually empowers them to know exactly what to do and when in order to bring about the salvation that was needed. Both serve to preserve Israel and make it possible for ‘The Seed of the Woman’ promised in Genesis 3:15 to be born and to emerge in the fullness of time. Both fulfill the salvation role of the promised Messiah, the promised ‘Anointed One.’ Both are used by God to save Abraham’s family and the rest of the world, from the jaws of death.

When Joseph’s brothers stood in his presence years after they had rejected and abandoned him, it was impossible for them to recognize him. To them, he was just another Gentile, an alien that had no connection to them or to their God. By that time, he had a Gentile name; he spoke, dressed and acted as a Gentile. So they failed to recognize him as the brother they had rejected and forsaken years before.

Is it not the same with Yeshua? Have not his own brothers misunderstood, disowned and forsaken Him? And isn’t it because Gentiles embraced Yeshua and brought Him into their midst, that His appearance has been changed so drastically and radically over the centuries? Isn’t that a big reason why He remains unrecognizable to most of Israel? Aren’t those enormous changes that Yeshua has undergone at the hands of non-Jewish people not a major reason why His own family has a veil over their eyes that prevents them from recognizing Him as their own? And are not the prophets and apostles telling us that one day we will see a glorious, final revelation, understanding and reconciliation and reunion between Yeshua and all of Israel? (See Romans 11)

Joseph forgave, saved, embraced and completely reconciled with his brothers by the end of his story. And he was able to provide for all of their needs. So he saved Israel from starvation and death. Now notice how closely his life resembles the prophecies concerning the suffering Messiah as given through Isaiah 52:13-15; 53. Yeshua is the Fulfillment of all that. What happened to Joseph in the Torah is a precise revelation of Yeshua, the Lamb of God and Messiah-King of Israel. He is revealed throughout Genesis. And His Father continues to reveal Him through the lives of future Israelites as they will appear in subsequent books of the Bible.

Unlike what Joseph’s brothers did, the Gentiles of Egypt recognized, respected and acknowledged Joseph’s God-given wisdom, value and significance. Officially, he was a slave at the very bottom of the Egyptian ‘food chain.’ Egypt was the epitome of the fallen, idolatrous world system. But despite the fact that the Pharaoh was considered to be one of Egypt’s gods, despite all of the deeply embedded satanic opposition that uprooted Joseph from his original God-given Israel matrix and debased and stranded him in utter helplessness in the demon-possessed outside world , God was with Joseph! And He saw to it that the true identity, purpose and destiny of His servant would emerge and triumph ultimately. Joseph’s story is a prophetic pattern or template revealing one to come that will prove to be infinitely greater than Joseph, one through whom God will do on a world-wide global scale, and throughout the entire universe, what He once did through Joseph, on a regional scale.

Yeshua is revealed beneath the surface of the lives of Abraham’s Family. Abraham’s family was created by God to serve all the families of the earth. Joseph was a debased slave serving all of Egypt. But Yeshua, God’s living Word is, in a real sense, ‘The Ultimate Slave of all slaves.’ He serves His Father in Heaven and on Earth…100% of the time (Isaiah 55:8-11; John 5:19; 30). He is eternally devoted to doing His Father’s will. He only serves and obeys His Father. Nothing He does is for Himself or His own Glory. He does exactly what His Father wants, to perfection. So to serve His Father, the Word sustains and feeds and protects every aspect and level of God’s universe. He tends lovingly to each of His Father’s creatures, large and small…including us. He is the Chief Slave in His Father’s enormous ‘Household’ and ‘Estate.’ And we see this aspect of Yeshua’s utter selfless love and service, prefigured and revealed in and through Joseph who served all of Egypt and surrounding regions. In writing of Joseph, Moses was revealing the coming Messiah.

Just as Yeshua had to be sent away from His home in Heaven to live among the Sin-corrupted people of Earth, so was Joseph taken from His home in the Land of Canaan, to fulfill God’s purposes among the idolaters of Egypt. The obedience of God’s Word is revealed in the obedience of Joseph. The Messiah is revealed by the way Joseph reacted to malicious, deadly, demonic temptation (See Genesis 39; Matthew 4:1-11). And He is revealed in the way Joseph responded to the crimes and injustices committed against him by his brothers and by certain Egyptians. (See Isaiah 52:7-15; 53; Luke 23:33-35) Yeshua is seen in the way Joseph forgave his brothers and by the selfless redemptive love God gave to the Egyptians through Joseph (Acts 7:9; 10:34-38). Yeshua can be seen by the way Joseph continued to live in exile throughout his life…always overcoming the evil of his own people and that of the pagans around them with the awesome Good that God kept giving to Him from Heaven (Romans 12:21).

Yeshua’s earthly life and global significance was prefigured by the way Gentiles acknowledged, embraced and elevated Joseph. Joseph’s family learned to live without Joseph, the way most of Israel has learned to live without Yeshua. But our Master is further revealed, in and by the way Joseph always enjoyed God’s favor. Despite the fact that both were despised and rejected by their family members, the Gentiles around Joseph and Yeshua made a place for the divine favor that they obviously enjoyed. Gentiles allowed them to operate in their midst…and they raised them both to the highest position of absolute authority and power and entrusted themselves and everything they owned, to their wise and faithful care. There is so much similarity between Joseph and what Scripture says about the Messiah, that some Jewish sages predicted that there will be two Messiahs: one would be named ‘Messiah, Son of Joseph’, and the other, ‘Messiah, Son of David.’ But we New Covenant disciples know that the prophetic functions of the Suffering Servant of God and the Messiah King of Israel are fulfilled in one Person – Yeshua. He has already fulfilled what was foretold about Him in the life of Joseph. And soon, He will fulfill what was foretold about the Messiah’s supreme triumph as the Son of David.

When it was finally time for Joseph to reveal himself to his brothers, he sent his Gentile attendants out of the room. Then, when he and his brothers were alone, Joseph revealed himself…and his brothers immediately ‘got it.’ Their immediate instinct was to fall at his feet in utter terror. But he lifted them up and embraced each one; and they all wept copious tears…each for his own reasons.

God was revealing in Genesis that in His good time an awesome revelation and reunion is going to take place between the risen Yeshua and His currently alienated Jewish brothers. So just as Joseph restored to his brothers in centuries past to their God-given, world-changing, Covenant identity, purpose and eternal destiny, Yeshua will do the same for all of Israel, and for all of Creation in the days ahead (See Revelation 21).

“The Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Now his master saw that the Lord was with him and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight and became his personal servant; and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he owned he put in his charge.” (Genesis 39:2-4)

“The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him…” (Acts 7:9 Emphases added.)

“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him!” (Acts 10:38) Emphasis added.

“You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.”

“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus (Yeshua) standing at the right hand of God; and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ (Acts 7:51-56 Emphasis added.)

Each book of the Bible is revealing God’s living Word, who sits eternally at His Father’s right hand. Regardless of the historical era or situation from which each book emerges, they all reveal His significance and perfect faithfulness to His Father. He creates and sustains everything that is. He is The Original Blessing God spoke into the human race, at the creation of our first parents. God commissioned them to be His Word’s image and likeness and co-administrators of His beautiful Earth. And the Word is the Ultimate Redeemer and Restorer of everything the Serpent and his Sin destroyed. The Word of the living God has come to restore everything to all of us. And that is why HE IS EVERYTHING, to all of us! Yeshua keeps bringing God’s Salvation forward into each succeeding generation – through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and every other future member of the true Remnant of God’s True Israel, including us.

All of God’s revelation is tightly packed into Genesis. We will never finish with Genesis. As we study other books, our minds will keep going back to Genesis…as the Holy Spirit keeps bringing everything revealed in Genesis, forward…to its ultimate fulfillment in and through Yeshua! How could the living Word ever deviate from or change or violate even the least bit of what His Father moved and inspired Moses and the prophets of Israel to write about Him? It could never be!

May our Master soon receive the full reward of the agony He underwent to restore everything to us! It was already done before the foundation of the world. The Work was done perfectly, before Adam and Eve were created. They and the rest of the human race were born into the enormity and depth and beauty and perfection of God’s Eternal, Perfect Shabbat Shalom (Sabbath Rest)

 “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings (the Tanach) which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture (the Tanach) is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:14-17)

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:3-6)

The Seed that leads to the Eternal Fullness that God’s people will inherit as co-heirs with their Messiah was planted into His Creation by God, through His living Word, in the very beginning. And God revealed this to us through Moses and his Torah…so that this Treasure could be known and loved and appreciated and protected by every one of the human generations…to the very end of time.