Let me make another observation about the life of our favorite character: Joseph. He spent a lot of time in pits. His brothers threw him into a pit as they debated what to do with him. Potiphar’s wife lied about Joseph. He was arrested and thrown into another pit in Egypt. When Joseph pleads with Pharaoh’s cupbearer to remember him and inform Pharaoh of his innocence, he says, “here also, I have done nothing that they should put me into the pit.” He was innocent in Israel and in Egypt. His brothers unjustly threw him into the pit back in his homeland, and Potiphar’s wife brought false charges against him, and he was thrown into another pit unjustly. There was no reason for him to find himself in these pits. But there he was! Joseph was in the pits! Joseph was left in this prison pit when the cupbearer failed to keep his promise! It appears that Joseph had been in Egypt for about 13 years, most of which was probably spent in the pit.
Most of the sermons I’ve preached on this portion of the life of Joseph had to do with being in the pits. I’m sure you’ve been in the pits! Maybe your job has you in the pits. Perhaps some broken relationship has put you in the pits. Perhaps guilt and despair have put you in the pit. Perhaps you’re in the pits, and like Joseph, you don’t even know why. Joseph could not get himself out of either pit. He was unable to help himself. The only thing he could do was trust God, be faithful in his duties, and wait. When God finally acted on his behalf, he became supreme ruler in Egypt, was given a wife and had two sons. He named his sons, “God has made me forget my hardship (Manasseh), and “God made me fruitful” (Ephraim). The point is God is the one who did it. Joseph waited on God when he was in the pit. He went about his daily life trusting God to act in His good time. So, what do you do when you’re in the pits? Wait. Just wait upon the Lord. As attractive as that message is, the story about Joseph and even the exact details of his life were not recorded in scripture, so I can find encouragement when I’m down in the pits. Yet, I still find encouragement personally but not nearly the kind of encouragement I get when I stand by my father’s gravesite and realize the pit is the pit of death. Joseph is about the one who is to come and save us from that pit.
Jesus himself said that the whole Old Testament, including the stories, are really about him. Jesus is the one delivered from the one pit, the grave; Joseph’s story foretells that. All who believe in him will also be delivered from that great pit. John 3:16 fits here: “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Pink wraps up my thought for me very well: “‘And they took him, and cast him into a pit; and the pit was empty, there was no water in it’ (37:24). We quote now from Dr. Haldeman: ‘The pit wherein is no water, is another name for Hades, the underworld, the abode of the disembodied dead of all the dead before the resurrection of Christ. ‘The pit wherein is no water’ (Zech. 9:11). ‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (Matt. 12:40). It was here our Lord, as to His Soul, abode between death and resurrection.”1 But Jesus was raised from the pit on the third day. Genesis 41:14 tells of Joseph’s deliverance, “Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they quickly brought him out of the pit. And when he had shaved and changed his clothes, he came in before Pharaoh.” You and I will be cleaned up and given new clothes when we are ultimately delivered from the big pit! Now that’s exciting!
1 Arthur Walkington Pink, Gleanings in Genesis (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005), 359.