Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Joseph, the younger son of Jacob and his beloved Rachel, is an example of how the New Covenant is a blessing to youth. When his ten older brothers cruelly rejected him and sold him to be a slave to the Midianites, who then sold him to the Ishmaelites, who took him as a slave to Egypt, Joseph's New Covenant faith kept him from utter despair. Of course, the young lad cried and cried as he saw in the distance his father's home disappear; but also his heart thrilled through and through with a resolve to dedicate himself totally to the God of his fathers.
No youth could make such a resolve unless New Covenant faith was his; it wasn't some superior virtue that Joseph had--it was his faith that "worked." It was through that New Covenant faith that God was able to hold his hand and keep him from falling into the pit of despair that so many disappointed people fall in to.
The New Covenant does not consist of a "bargain" that God makes in agreement with His people; it consists of the Lord's out-and-out promises to bless them. Of course, they respond, but their response is not "works," it is faith--believing and appreciating His promises, being moved by them.
When Joseph was later tempted so alluringly by Potiphar's wife, again it was his New Covenant faith that preserved him from falling. God held him by the hand; it's not that Joseph did nothing and just let the Lord save him; he did something very important--he believed those promises. His heart was moved with a deep appreciation for the love of his Savior.
Although he lived in Old Testament times, he was experiencing the New Testament vision of being moved by the love (agape) of Christ. Joseph was in tune with Paul's idea of the agape of Christ moving his heart to the point where he dedicated all he had to the One who so loved him that He went to the cross and died there his (Joseph's) second death.
The Lord loves us no less than He loved Joseph.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 2, 2008.
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