As God continued blessing His chosen people as they occupied their appointed lands in Egypt, Pharaoh took notice and didn’t like what he saw. It was a different Pharaoh than the one that took advantage of Joseph’s gifts to bring prosperity to Egypt. This Pharaoh felt threatened by Joseph’s descendants. Exodus 1:8-9 gives us his reaction, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.’” The problem that this new king had was that he didn’t know Joseph. You’ve heard it said that what you don’t know can’t hurt you! That’s not true in this case.
The new king didn’t know Joseph, and it greatly directed the course of Egypt’s future. I saw a license plate the other day that said “NOGDNOPC.” I took it to mean “No God, no peace.” This is a pretty familiar saying for Christians. But I like a different spelling of the word for “NO.” It’s “know” God, know peace! They are both true, and because Pharaoh did not “know” Joseph and Joseph’s God, he had “no” peace. There are many agnostics in the world who fall short of being outright atheists but say that they “do not know God.” Some even say you “can’t” know God. I like the way the Living Bible Paraphrases 1 Timothy 6:21, “Some of these people have missed the most important thing in life—they don’t know God.”
Not knowing Joseph and Joseph’s God brought some great suffering upon the nation of Egypt. Because of his ignorance concerning Joseph, Pharaoh saw him as an enemy instead of an ally. Butler observes, “He looked upon the Jews with disdain when he should have looked upon them with delight. Likewise, when one is ignorant of Jesus Christ, he will despise the good and dignify the bad, which is the habit of our society today. What you love and what you hate depends upon your knowledge of Jesus Christ, and by the looks of things, most of our society is ignorant of Jesus Christ.”[1] Because of Pharaoh’s ignorance of Joseph and Joseph’s God, Egypt was ruined. His ignorance resulted in the awful plagues which fell upon the land at the hand of Moses, God’s servant. It ruined the Egyptian economy that Joseph had saved in the past. The forced labor he imposed upon the Israelites brought much death and sorrow to the land.
Butler concludes his discussion on Pharaoh not knowing Joseph by using the situation as a metaphor for our day in America. He writes, “Because of his ignorance of Joseph, the king made a bunch of laws that tried to kill the Jews, which were his biggest blessing. So it is with our government. They oppose God, and the courts decree periodically that God cannot be allowed in certain places. How stupid to not want God around and to make laws to that extent. The laws allow all sorts of evil to be taught in our schools, but they will not allow Christ to be even mentioned in many cases. Such laws reflect ignorance, not wisdom. Education that excludes Christ is not education. Laws that exclude Christ from a land are bad laws and laws that curse, not bless.”
[1] Butler, John G. 2014. Sermon Starters. Vol. 2. Clinton, IA: LBC Publications.