Join us as we explore the captivating story of Joseph, a man who rose from the depths of despair in an Egyptian dungeon to the heights of power as the Prime Minister of Egypt. Witness how his innate wisdom and divinely inspired interpretations of Pharaoh’s dreams not only save the Egyptian nation but also set the stage for family restoration and forgiveness. Learn about the strategic foresight that guides Joseph in securing Egypt’s food supply during a severe famine and how this extraordinary tale of faith and resilience unfolds.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 02 :
What in the world is God doing? Did he just start all this going and go off and leave it? Or maybe he’s sitting in a heavenly recliner with a remote, watching all this like a great sweeping soap opera. Or is it possible that God has a plan and that he is working the plan? You know, there’s reason to believe that most of the time and most of the world, God just lets things run. But there are individuals and there are circumstances that he seems to steer from time to time. It doesn’t look like he really needs to manage every detail. He doesn’t have to be a micromanager. He knows his people. He knows their hearts. He knows all the probabilities. And so all he has to do is tweak things from time to time to get the results that he’s looking for. But once in a while, he finds it necessary to communicate with somebody, because if he doesn’t, they’re not going to do what they need to do. And so it was that the Egyptian Pharaoh had a dream. And I gather this was not one of those dreams that come about from going to bed on a full stomach. Somehow, Pharaoh knew this dream was different from the rest of the dreams that he had. Because in the dream, he saw seven fat cows come up out of the river. They were followed by seven extremely lean, emaciated cows. And in the dream, the seven lean cows ate the seven fat cows. It must have been an ugly dream and Pharaoh probably woke up in a sweat. Well, when he finally got back to sleep again, he dreamed again. This time he saw a stalk of corn, heavy with seven lush ears of corn. Then, just like before, a stalk with seven thin ears that were all dry and mildewed came up on another stalk and they ate up the seven good ears of corn. And Pharaoh woke up again, very troubled by what he had seen. But he couldn’t find anyone who could interpret the dream and tell him what it meant. And then his wine steward remembered something he had forgotten. He remembered a terrible mistake he had made. He remembered a man named Joseph that he had known in prison. It had been over two years before this that the wine steward himself had had a dream. And very troubled by his dream, Joseph interpreted it for him. He told him, well, what’s going to happen is they’re going to take you out of prison and put you back where you were before, and everything’s going to be just fine. And everything worked out in precise detail from that dream, exactly what Joseph had told him in prison was going to happen. Well, Joseph, when he left prison, that is when the steward left prison, told him, now look, I’m down here unjustly. I was accused of rape. I didn’t do it. I’m an innocent man. Would you speak for me to the Pharaoh? Well, the steward went back to work and promptly forgot all about Joseph. Two years pass, and now when this dream comes up, he remembers, and I would be surprised if he wasn’t loaded down with a pretty heavy load of guilt for letting Joseph down the way he had done it. Now, at long last, he tells Pharaoh about the young Hebrew servant who interprets dreams. So they sent some guys down to the dungeon, and they dragged Joseph out of there, gave him a bath and a shave. Remember, it had been something well over two years since poor Joseph had had a shave. They put some decent clothes on him, and they brought him into the cave. And the king, looking at his just polished up prisoner they brought before him, says, they tell me that you can interpret dreams. And Joseph answered Pharaoh and saying, well, it’s not in me, but God will give Pharaoh the answer. And we have this image of a king sitting on his throne, communing with a servant and telling the servant about his two dreams. Joseph listens attentively to the whole thing, and then he tells him, this is what your dreams are about. The two dreams are actually about the same thing. The fact that the dream is doubled means it is confirmed and that it’s urgent. There are going to be seven good years for grain in Egypt. And they’re going to be followed by seven very, very bad years. Now Joseph, who seems to have had a singular gift of wisdom from God for a relatively young man, he is, by the way, when all this is going on, only 30. He says to the king, there’s going to come seven years of great plenty throughout the land of Egypt. And at the end of that, you’re going to have seven years of famine. And all the plenty will be forgotten. It’s going to become so bad. The plenty, it won’t even be known in the land by reason of the famine that follows. It’s going to be so bad, everybody will just forget about the good years. And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it’s for this reason. The thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. So we understand what’s going on here. It’s confirmed. Not merely is it confirmed, it’s urgent. We need to act now. Now here’s what I suggest. We have now a prisoner, a former slave, bought and sold into slavery by his brothers, after two years in a dungeon in prison, standing here giving advice to Pharaoh about what to do about the economy of Egypt. He says, here’s what I think we ought to do. Pharaoh needs to look out a man discreet and wise and set him over the land of Egypt. He needs to make him kind of a czar over this question of agricultural. Let Pharaoh do this and let him appoint officers over the land and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. You realize what he’s doing? They’re imposing a 20% surtax on the crops that are going to be grown for seven straight years. One-fifth of them gathered up. put into storage. Let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up the grain under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep the food in the cities. And that food shall be for store for the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt, that the land perish not through the famine. You know, I suppose this is the origin of the idea because I never heard of anything before it. The origin of the idea that government can act as an economic buffer against times of trouble, that the government is big enough that it can take money out of the economy in good times and put money back into the economy in bad times and sort of mellow out, as it were, the economic cycle. Now, the idea that some people have is we have too much government, which I don’t particularly disagree with, but the point simply is this. There is a legitimate role of government in acting as an economic buffer because people lack foresight. People won’t really look ahead, and people will eat up all that they have right now today, and then tomorrow they won’t have anything. And so the idea of a government that looks ahead and works for the benefit of all the people, actually buffering people against hard times and during good times, is not a bad idea. So they have put this 20% surtax in storage, and they’re going to dole that back out to the people when the going gets rough. The thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh. He says, this is smart. And all of his other servants said, yeah, that is, that’s a wise thing to do. And Pharaoh looked around and said, well… Where are we going to find a man like this one? A man that the Spirit of God is. And he said to Joseph, God has showed you all this. It’s plain that there’s nobody around here that’s as discreet and as wise as you are. You’re going to be complete steward of my house. You’re going to be over it all. And according to your word shall all my people be ruled. Only in the throne will I be greater than you. What this man does is elevate a man from prison, a slave, to make him the prime minister of all of Egypt. He told Joseph, I put you over the whole thing. He took off his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand. He arrayed him in vestures of fine linen. He put a gold chain around his neck. He made him ride in the second chariot that he had. They cried ahead of him as he ran through the streets. Bow the knee, and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, I am the boss. And without your say-so, Joseph, no man is going to lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt. Probably something of an exaggeration, but what he is saying here, he is really bestowing enormous power on this former slave. He gave him an Egyptian name, which is unpronounceable. He gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potiphar, priest of On. And then Joseph starts running the land of Egypt at the age of 30. And so began the richest period in the history of the Egyptian people. What happened after that, we’ll talk about when I come back.
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Join us online at borntowin.net. That’s borntowin.net. Read essays by Ronald Dart. Listen to Born to Win radio programs every day, past weekend Bible studies, plus recent sermons, as well as sermons from the CEM Vault. Drop us an email and visit our online store for CDs, DVDs, literature, and books. That’s borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 02 :
I said earlier that I think many times God doesn’t continually intervene in world affairs, but only occasionally steps in and tweaks things a little here and there. That said, sometimes the depth at which he works and the foresight, the length of time ahead of time he makes provision for things, is really astonishing. What’s coming in this particular case is a famine that’s going to affect not merely Egypt, it’s going to affect the whole region around there. And what happens is also the fact that God, foreseeing the famine, reveals it to Pharaoh and sets Joseph up in position because of another part of his plan he’s working. But in fact, what they accomplished by this is to save thousands of lives in the entirety of the region because no other part in the world at that time made this kind of preparation for this famine. For seven solid years, their ground in Egypt brought forth grain by the handfuls. I mean, they had it everywhere. They had it stored in the temples, stored in houses, running out the windows. They had grain, grain, and more grain. And they laid it up and stored it. Joseph, it says, gathered corn like the sand of the sea. To the point, they finally stopped keeping account of how much they brought in because they had too much. Meanwhile, Joseph had two sons in that seven-year period of time. His wife, Asenath, the daughter of the priest, bore these sons to him. He called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, for God, he said, has made me forget all my work and all my father’s house. And the name of the second he called Ephraim, for God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction. You know, it’s interesting, just in passing, that the two boys who will receive the birthright blessing from Jacob were half Egyptian, just as the two sons of Judah who would carry the kingship of Israel were half Canaanite. And you have to come to the conclusion that race doesn’t really seem to matter that much to God as the birthright is passed on through the sons and not the daughters. The concern over what appears to be interracial marriage in the Bible really has to do with religion, not race as we use the term today. Well, after the seven years of Plinius, they were all over. And the seven years of drought began to settle in on the land just like Joseph said it was coming. And it was everywhere. But in the land of Egypt, ah, there was bread there. So when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people began to cry to Pharaoh for bread. And Pharaoh said to the Egyptians, You go talk to Joseph. What he says to you, you do that. The famine, it was over the whole face of the earth. And Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians. And the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt. And all the countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn, so the famine was sore in all lands. And isn’t this just like the government? First of all, they taxed the people 20% of all the grain that they had in those years and they stored it away. And then when the time comes for the people to get it back, they have to pay for it. That seems to be the way government works. Now, this famine. again, was over the whole region. Egypt was the only place where there was food, and it was there only because God decreed it so. And here’s our question coming rolling back again. What on earth is God doing here? Does he have a plan? It would seem so. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, back home where Jacob’s father is and where his 11 brothers live, they are starving. And Jacob looked around at the boys and said, What are you sitting here looking at each other for? I’ve heard that there’s food in Egypt. Now you get yourself up, you get down there, and you buy us some food so we’re not going to die in this terrible famine. And so Joseph’s ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt. But Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, Jacob wouldn’t send with his brethren, for he said, I’m afraid something bad is going to happen to Benjamin. You know, it’s funny. Joseph was always his favorite son. And Benjamin, born of the same mother, is now his favorite son. And Jacob hasn’t learned anything. He is still playing favorites with his boys. But in the process, he sets up one of the really great scenes in this ongoing soap opera. His boys, who sold Joseph into slavery, are going to have to face him to buy grain to stay alive. The irony of it all. And the sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came, for the famine was all over the land of Canaan. Joseph, we already know, was the governor of the land. He was the one that sold to all the people of the land. And here come Joseph’s brethren, And they bowed themselves down before him with their faces to the ground. They had no idea who he was. What an incredible irony there is here. Do you remember? Joseph had had a dream in which there were 12 sheaves of grain. And the 11 sheaves of grain bowed down to the one. And his brethren, when they heard that dream, said, Are we going to bow down to you? We’re not going to bow down to you. In fact, that dream had nearly gotten Joseph killed. And now it’s coming to pass. His brothers are bowing down with their foreheads on the ground in front of them. He knew them, recognized them immediately. But he made himself strange to them and spoke roughly to them. He said, what are you doing here? And they said, we came from the land of Canaan to buy food. And he remembered the dreams that he had dreamed. And he said to them, you’re spies. You’ve actually come down here to see the nakedness of the land. You come down here to look at what’s going on. You’re going to take advantage of us. And he said, no, no, my Lord. We’ve just come down here to buy food. We’re all one man’s son. We are true men. Your servants are no spies. He says, no, no. You’ve come down here to see our hardship. You’ve come down here to spy out the land. And they said, no, we’re 12 brothers, the sons of one man, the land of Canaan. Behold, the youngest is with our father this day, and one is not. The irony in that, Joseph. I’m sure he listened to the speech. Okay, 12 sons, right? Okay, continue your story. Where’s the other one? He’s up there with the dad. Okay, that’s 11. What about the 12th one? Well, he doesn’t exist anymore. And Joseph said to them, It’s what I said. You’re spies. I’ll tell you how I’m going to test you. By the life of Pharaoh, you’re not going to go out of here unless your younger brother comes down here. Send one of you. Let him fetch your brother, and you’ll be kept in prison that your words can be proved. Joseph wanted to see Benjamin, but he also wanted to make his brothers scared to death. He put them all in prison and ward for three days. And the third day, Paul pulled them out and says, Okay, here’s what we’re going to do, for I’m a God-fearing man. If you’re true men, let one of your brethren be bound in the house of your prison. We’re going to keep one of them here as a hostage, and the rest of you can go home and carry the corn for the famine in your houses. But you bring your youngest brother to me. That’s how I’m going to know that you’re not a spy, and your words can be verified.” And they left. They decided they’d have to go. They said to one another, you know, we’re very guilty concerning our brother. We saw the anguish of his soul, and when he asked us, we wouldn’t listen. And therefore has this distress come upon us. And Reuben, Reuben wasn’t above saying, I told you so, because Reuben was the one that tried to talk him out of it in the first place. Didn’t I say don’t sin against the child and you wouldn’t listen? Now, behold, that’s what’s going on. His blood is being required of us. Now, what’s interesting, this whole conversation goes on with Joseph standing right there. They didn’t think Joseph understood them because they shifted back into the language of Canaan. Joseph, for all they knew, only spoke Egyptian because he had been speaking to them by an interpreter. And he listened to this conversation and he whipped around, turned around from them and left to cry. He wept. He returned to them again and communed with them and took from them Simeon and tied him up right there in front of their eyes, tied his hands and sent him back into the prison. They were going to go through the whole ordeal. And Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, restore every man’s money to his sack. They didn’t know this. And to give them provision for the way and he sent them home. And as one of them opened his sack on the way to give his ass something to eat at the end, he spied the money. It was still in the sack’s mouth. And he said, My money is restored. Lo, it’s in my sack. And their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying, What in the world has God done to us? And they came to Jacob their father in the land of Canaan and told him all that befell them while they were down there. The outcome of this story is truly remarkable.
SPEAKER 01 :
We’ll talk about that when I come back. If you would like to share this program with friends and others, write or call this week only and request your free copy of What Is God Doing? No.
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SPEAKER 02 :
Meanwhile, the dread that these boys had in explaining to their father what had happened to them down there, how they’d had to leave Simeon behind. You know, he’s already lost Joseph, he thinks. Now Simeon has been left behind as a hostage, and they want Benjamin to come down there. And Jacob said, you bereave me of my children. Joseph is not. Simeon is not. And you’re going to take Benjamin away. Now, poor Reuben, fighting this battle out in his own heart and mind, he says to his dad, look, you can kill my two sons if I don’t bring him back. He’ll give me the son back. Let me take Benjamin down there, and I’ll bring them both back. And boy, Jacob was not having any of that. He said, my son will not go down with you. His brother’s dead. He’s alone. If mischief befall him by the way in which you go, you’re going to bring my gray head down to the grave with sorrow. And so he wrote Simeon off. Unfortunately, he couldn’t write the famine off. It got worse. And it came to pass, when they had eaten every bit of the grain they had eaten up, which they brought from Egypt, he said, get down there again and buy us a little food. Now Judah, at this point in time, must have rolled his eyes up to heaven and said, no way. We can’t do that. This man told us solemnly, you’re not going to see my face unless you bring your brother. We can’t go down there. We can take all the money in the world. This guy is not going to give us any grain unless we take Benjamin down there. He’s going to consider we’re spies and all of us may be lost. If you’ll send our brother with us, we’ll go down and buy you food. If you won’t send him, we will not go down. In Israel, kind of whining, really, I think. Why do you deal so ill with me as to tell the man you even had a brother? It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have told him you had another brother. And again, I’m sure Judah rolled his eyes to heaven and said, what in the world are we going to do about this? And he said, the man asked us straightly of our state, of our kindred. He asked us specifically, is your father alive? Do you have another brother? What do you want us to do, to lie to him? Could we know he was going to say, bring your brother down? And Judah said to Israel’s father, Send the lad with me. We will arise and go, and that way the family will live, we, you, and our little children. I’ll be surety for him. You can require him of me. If I don’t bring him back and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. After all, Dad, if we hadn’t fooled around, we would have already been down there and had Simeon back. And their father said to him, well, if we have to do it, do this. Take some gifts down there and give the man a present, some balm, a little honey, some spices, maybe some nuts and almonds. And take double money in your hand. Take back that money that you brought back in the mouth of the sacks. Carry that down there again. It may have been an oversight. And take your brother. He must have had a lump in his throat when he said that. And go to the man. And may God give you mercy before the man that he may send away your other brother, Benjamin. If I’m bereaved of my children, I guess I’ll lose them. And so they did. They took double money in their hand and took Benjamin with them, and they went down to Egypt, and they stood before Joseph, 11 brothers before one. And when Joseph saw Benjamin with them, He told his chief steward, bring these men home, make a big feast. I want these men to dine with me at noon. So it was all done. And these guys, all these 11 brothers were scared. They had been brought right into Joseph’s house, and that was not the way things were normally done. And they thought, they had every possible terrible thought about what’s actually going on here. It must be because of the money that was back in our sacks. And they’re looking for occasion against us. They’re going to fall on us. They’re going to make us prisoners. They’re going to take all of our animals. This is awful. They were scared to death. And they came to Joseph’s steward and they said, sir, sir, when we came down the first time to buy food, it turned out that we got home and opened our sacks. We all had our money in our sack in full weight. And we brought that money back to you. We didn’t mean to keep it. The other money we had brought down our hands. We got more to buy food. We don’t know how that money got in our sacks. You know how guilt is, don’t you? You start covering up just as fast as you can. And the steward says, don’t be afraid. Fear not. Your God and the God of your father has given you treasure in your sacks. I have your money. And he brought Simeon out to them. And so 11 brothers are all there. They’ve had their feet washed. They have water to drink. The asses are all taken care of. And they’ve got the present ready against noon for Joseph because they were going to eat bread in his house. When Joseph came home, they gave him the present. They all bowed themselves before him, and he asked of their welfare. He says, Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive? Joseph inquires of his father. And they answered, Your servant, our father, is in good health. He is still alive. And they bowed down their heads and made obeisance. And he looked up his eyes, and he saw his brother Benjamin, who was his own mother’s son. He said, This your younger brother you spoke to me of? He said, God be gracious to you, my son. And Joseph spun around in haste and left quickly because the scripture says his bowels did yearn upon his brother. You can only imagine, after not having seen this brother of his for all these years, how that it gripped him right down the core of his being. And he went to find a place to weep and entered his chamber and bawled his eyes out. I still can’t figure out why no one has made this into an epic movie. He washed his face and went out and got himself under control and had lunch with his brothers. But the rest of the story will have to wait.
SPEAKER 01 :
Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart, and you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to You may call us at 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at
Join us as we explore the captivating story of Joseph, a man who rose from the depths of despair in an Egyptian dungeon to the heights of power as the Prime Minister of Egypt. Witness how his innate wisdom and divinely inspired interpretations of Pharaoh’s dreams not only save the Egyptian nation but also set the stage for family restoration and forgiveness. Learn about the strategic foresight that guides Joseph in securing Egypt’s food supply during a severe famine and how this extraordinary tale of faith and resilience unfolds.
