Sermon: Genesis 39 - Joseph Series, September 13, 2026
Scripture: Genesis 39
Preacher: Ryan Slifka
Sermon: Genesis 39 - Joseph Series,
You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
of our shame,
Oh Lord, you know we long to believe it.
By your Holy Spirit,
show us what we’ve always been looking for;
show us your power,
show us yourself,
In Jesus’ name. Amen.[i]
This week we continue our sermon series “God meant it for good” on the character of Joseph. Joseph, from the book of Genesis. Not Joseph, adoptive father of Jesus, but Joseph, son of Jacob.
Things didn’t start well for Joseph, if you recall. His brothers, out of jealous resentment, threw him in a pit and had him sold into slavery in Egypt.
Soon, however, Joseph’s on the rise. He’s sold to Potiphar, the captain of the royal guard, Pharaoh’s right-hand man. There Joseph becomes a “successful man,” a rising star in his master’s household. Everything Joseph touches turns to gold, so Potiphar puts him in charge of his entire household. On account of Joseph, the whole house prospers.
Soon, though, there’s a little bump in the road.
Because not only is Joseph brilliant and capable–he’s a handsome fella. This Hebrew is hot. He catches the eye of the worst possible person: his master, Potiphar’s, wife. Her looks are really only matched by her candor: “lie with me,” she says to him. Basically “let’s get in bed right now.” But Joseph has none of it. He can’t betray her husband, or God.
Unfortunately, she won’t take no for an answer. She ambushes him alone at home, again, with that simple request “lie with me.” This time he not only refuses, he flees the scene.
And when he does, though, she’s got a vice-grip on his coat. She uses it as evidence, that he was actually the one trying to seduce her. “I knew this Hebrew was a risk from day one,” she tells her husband—his attempted assault just proved it. So Potiphar has him tossed in jail. So much for Joseph and his skill. So much for Joseph and his prosperity.
But you can’t keep a good man down.
Just when you think Joseph’s down for the count, he pulls himself back to his feet. He dazzles the chief jailer just as he did Potiphar, and Joseph is put in charge of his fellow prisoners. No sooner is he behind bars than he’s back on top, prospering again just like before.
Joseph’s gifted as they say. He’s got skill, that not only makes him flourish, where ever he is the whole place prospers. He gets knocked down, but gets up again–ain’t nothin’ gonna keep him down.
And, of course, we all know people like this. People who seem to have the right stuff, people who bloom, no matter the quality of soil they’re planted in. We usually attribute it to good genes, or the quality of their upbringing. Education, attitude, or good old fashioned hard work.
None of this, though, is mentioned about Joseph. What does Genesis attribute it to?
“The Lord was with Joseph,” it says. “The Lord caused all that he does to prosper in his hands.” In Potiphar’s palace, but also after he’s framed by Potiphar's wife. In prison–same thing: “the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.” Joseph goes from the pit to prosperity, back in the pit, and back up to prosperity again.
And who does the author credit? God. It’s a sort of rags to riches kind of story. Except here, the creator of the universe is working behind the scenes, giving Joseph the opportunities, the talent, and the know-how to turn Potiphar’s household around. Joseph’s one talented man, this is true. But it’s God who is the source of it all. It’s God who gives Joseph a special blessing, is with him, and whatever he touches prospers.
Now, there’s one little detail when it comes to this story that we often miss.
Sure, God’s with Joseph, God makes everything Joseph does prosper. It all sounds good. But you’ll remember that none of this stuff happens in the most ideal circumstances.
He was sold into slavery by his brothers, remember. He’s a foreigner, all alone in a strange land. He’s sexually harassed, then punished under a hailstorm of lies. Landing him not just in house slavery, but real prison. In spite of all the good he does. Even when he’s climbing the ladder, impressing superiors and making every dull surface shine, he’s still a slave. And all his slaving away is done under a great shadow of suffering. One that never fully goes away.
And yet, our scripture has the audacity to say that “God was with him,” and he prospered.
And not only that, but every year when Christmas comes around, we hear that phrase, “God with us,” again, but applied to that little baby Jesus. God is not only with Jesus, but Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us… in the flesh. It all sounds so nice and good, but we forget that—like Joseph—Jesus was brought up on false charges. Like Joseph, he was stripped of his clothes, and imprisoned. He was whipped and spit on, like Joseph experiencing great humiliation, suffering and shame. Then, unlike Joseph, he was put to death on a cross.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of prosperity I think about comfort. I think about wealth, and status. If anything it’s avoiding things like slavery, suffering, and jail. If this is prosperity, I don’t wanna know what adversity is!
And yet, this is exactly, the claim of the Christian faith. This is what God with us is like, Jesus is the human being at his most prosperous, in the words of one early church writer, “the human being fully alive.”1[ii] And he comes to give us the same.
In his book on death and the Christian life, J. Todd Billings, details his own very personal struggle with this question. He wrote it while enduring harsh treatments for an incurable cancer. A book on dying by a terminal person–not exactly where you might go looking for tips on successful living.
But he was continually asking himself if there is a God, and this God is with me—then why the cancer? If there is a God, and this God is for me, meaning that this God wants me to prosper, to flourish, to do well–then why the pain? No matter how good I am? No matter how hard I pray? Why all the heartache? Why the loss?
The problem, Billings says, is that we’ve often misunderstood Christianity as a religious system. One that’s all about good behavior that’s rewarded, one that’s all about doing the right things in order to ensure blessing–and to avoid doing the bad things to avoid cursedness. That if we’re good enough, or have enough faith, then we’ll be guaranteed all the good things in life–or at least smooth sailing. Then we’ll prosper.
But not so, though, says Billings.
“Far from granting ‘prosperity’ through status or health,” Billings writes,
“Rather than through status or health, the power of the gospel is shown in the cross… in suffering that doesn’t make sense. In the words of the [Reformer] Martin Luther… ‘the Holy Gospel is a powerful Word. Therefore it can not do its work without trials, and only he who tastes it is aware that it has such power. Where suffering and the cross are found, there the Gospel can show and exercise its power.’”[iii]
“Where suffering and the cross are found, there the Gospel can show and exercise its power.”
Which is to say that “God with us,” means that God is most powerfully present to us not in our successes or triumphs, the sunny days or in a healthy stock exchange. But within our sufferings. Within our heartaches. Our hurts and our shame.
And the kind of prosperity it’s talking about isn’t the worldly kind attested to by wealth or status or by happy smiling faces. But a genuine, true life that sustains us when the hurting hits us. And when the night is long. Because God is with us, it means that–by grace–our spirits can prosper even in prison, where ever we may be. Even when, like Joseph, like Jesus, we’re stripped of everything else.
You may know of the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer, in his time one of the most prominent critics of the Soviet Union. The main target of his criticism was the Gulag, the system of brutal prisons that still exist in some form today. And his criticism came from his experience on the inside.
Like Joseph, and like so many other victims of the Soviet Union before him, Solzhenitsyn was accused using false pretenses. Though a more or less believing communist, he was convicted of anti-Soviet propaganda. Then sentenced to eight years, in a series of prisons and hard labour camps. Whatever worst your imagination can come up with, it isn’t far off. And Solzhenitsyn served the full eight years. And, as if the Gulag weren’t bad enough, there he was diagnosed with cancer. Which, in the Gulag was most likely to be a death sentence. Like Joseph, he was stripped of everything he had. And underwent a kind of suffering and humiliation. One that few of us can imagine.
And yet, it was there that somehow… he prospered.
He was treated for his cancer and survived–somewhat miraculously. And it was while recovering from surgery in the Gulag hospital, there he also began to recover his Christianity. He was baptized as a child, but embraced atheism in adulthood like most Russians, even today. But it was there in the Gulag infirmary that he came to know to presence of Christ. He wrote the following poem, describing that experience:
I look back with grateful trembling
At the life I have had to lead.
Neither desire nor reason
Has illumined its twists and turns,
But the glow of a Higher Meaning
Only later to be explained.
And now with the cup returned to me
I scoop up the water of life.
Almighty God! I believe in Thee!
Thou remained when I Thee denied…”[iv]
Unlike Joseph, Solzhenitsyn didn’t rise up the ranks to prison superintendent. But, like Joseph, he’d come to see that even in prison the Lord was with him. Even when he’d turned his back on God altogether, the Lord was with him, showing him steadfast love. And there in the Gulag cancer ward–even there–he was somehow able to prosper. Not prosperity as we might understand it. But a prosperity of the spirit, of the soul, one greater than any wealth or success in this world, the “glow of a higher meaning, only later to be explained.” It was there, imprisonment, suffering and shame, in his own cross, there that—In Luther’s words—that God showed his power. His true power for life.
And this, dear friends, is the same promise for you and for me.
The God of the Christian gospel is not to be found primarily at our times of triumph, in our great successes, or our accolades. Not in our bustling bank accounts, full bellies or those days we hit our stride. But God is with us, like Joseph, in the pit. God is with you, like Jesus–in Jesus, in your places of failure and imprisonment. In your emptiness and weakness. In your suffering and your shame.
This is where he has not only promised to be, but this is where he says true prosperity is to be found. Not as we might have it. But the true prosperity of the spirit–peace, hope, faith, joyful service in love of God and neighbour. To live in the glow of a Higher Meaning, even on our darkest days.
Meaning that there are no dead ends in this life, or the next. It means there are no unrecoverable moments, or completely wasted lives. It means that there are no sins too great to be forgiven, no place so God-forsaken, and no hurt too great to bear. Because God is with us, it means it’s never too late to start again.
Knowing this, may you serve and love without fear as to what tomorrow holds. May you prosper where every you have been planted. Knowing that no matter what the future may hold, together we have been made conquerors through the one who loved us.
I offer this to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[i] Prayer based on U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for,” The Joshua Tree, 1987.
[ii] Common paraphrase of “For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God,” Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.20.7
[iii] J. Todd Billings, The End of the Christian Life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees us to Truly Live (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2020), 137.
[iv] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,The Gulag Archipelago, Part IV, ch. 1, “The Ascent,”