"How Great is Our God" Genesis 41 Pastor Allan Wooters, D.Min.

Genesis 41 has to stand as one of the most intriguing, significant, and fascinating narratives in all of Scripture. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, has not one but two dreams that were sent by God; dreams that changed history. Verses 1 – 8 introduce the story. I have noted previously in this series how the Egyptians understood dreams. No dream was “just a dream.” Each one was significant.

Egyptian Pharaohs, supposedly gods themselves, were thought to live on the edge of the divine realms. Their dreams, then, had unparalleled significance. In the case found in our text, where Pharaoh had two similar dreams, this made their significance crucial for one and all. But these dreams were more like nightmares. The two are related. Both dreams featured cannibalism. Both ended violently. Both were built on the number seven. Because they were the king’s dreams it was believed the events would come to pass. But there’s the rub. What did these disturbing dreams mean? That is what Pharaoh had to discover. 

He does what would be expected. Pharaoh calls in every wise man and magician, not just a few but all of them. And… they failed. The Bible says, “There was no one who could interpret them to Pharaoh.” How distraught must Pharaoh have been? No doubt fear was rising in every heart. What now?  

Enter Joseph. The cupbearer of Pharaoh, who Joseph had helped two years earlier, told the king of a young Hebrew man who could interpret dreams. Verses 14 – 16 recount Pharaoh sending for Joseph and questioning him about his abilities. In a display of incredible faith and courage, Joseph declares that God alone can and would reveal the meaning of the dreams. There was this one man, an imprisoned slave, standing before the king and the spiritual authorities of Egypt, promising that his God alone would help. And God does help. He reveals the exact meaning of the dreams namely that seven years of incredible harvests were coming only to be followed by seven years of extreme famine. Pharaoh needed to get ready for those hard years. The rest of the story makes us smile. Joseph advised Pharaoh to appoint someone wise to oversee the preparations for the famine. The king is no dummy. He looks at Joseph and says, “You’re the man!” Well… not exactly but in reality, it was so (vs.40 – 45).  

The story has so many themes we could discuss but one theme shines above them all. The account reminds us of how great our God truly is. Various factors in the text show us the greatness of God. One such factor to consider first is this: God is great because He alone can bring good out of evil and suffering.  

God Brings Good Out of Evil and Suffering 

This truth shines brightly in the account of the two sons born to Joseph (vs.50 – 52). Now first we should note that Manasseh and Ephraim are Hebrew names. Even though he was living in Egypt, and even though he married an Egyptian woman who was the daughter of a pagan priest, Joseph gave his two sons names that would remind them forever of their true heritage.  

But more than that. The names affirm Joseph’s belief that all along, God had been at work in his life even when he was a slave and then as a prisoner. Manasseh means, “forget” and Ephraim means, “fruitful.” Joseph can “forget” his sorrows because of God’s grace, and he can enjoy God’s blessings because God has made him “fruitful.” The birth of those two sons was no more an accident than Pharaoh’s two dreams or Joseph meeting Pharaoh’s two servants in jail. All of it was a work of God aimed at bringing about God’s plan for Israel and Egypt at that time and for the entire world in that God preserved Israel through whom Jesus would come.  

Now, we can understand why Joseph would name one son “fruitful.” But the first one is named “forget”? Wouldn’t naming his son “Manasseh” guarantee that he would remember the pain of his past? He couldn’t just wipe out the past from his mind by an act of will. Our minds are not like computers that can be totally reformatted. We can’t just “get over” painful memories. What then do we do?  

We do what Joseph did. By naming his son Manasseh, Joseph was editing or reimagining the significance of his past. He was putting it into the context of what God was doing in his life up to this point. His son’s name would forever be a reminder of God’s power to redeem the past. No, Joseph would never completely forget the past. Yet, from then on, he could remember it in light of all the blessings God had brought to him in the present. Joseph saw all the blessings happen he was enjoying, and those present blessings would forever shape how he viewed the past. God had been there all along. God had turned Joseph’s sufferings into joy which allowed him to see much more than just hurt and betrayal in his past. He had the joy of the Lord not in spite of his past, but because of it.  

Do the same for your past hurts. Look at where you are now; the lessons you’ve learned, the blessings you’ve had, the wisdom you have gained, and see that it has happened because God is using your past to shape you into someone amazing. Joseph learned that God is so great that He can and will bring good out of any evil and suffering. But this fact implies another we need to build our faith upon. It is that God encourages us in our suffering.  

God Encourages Us in Times of Suffering 

One of the ongoing notes in the entire Joseph saga is that God was with him. Joseph had indications that this was true. One encouragement God gave Joseph was that everything he did was successful. Somehow both he and others saw that it was God who granted the success. We see this in chapter 39 as Potiphar is blessed due to Joseph’s success and in chapter 40 where he interprets the dreams of two of Pharaoh’s servants. All of this indicated that God was working in Joseph’s life. This must have encouraged him.  

So, don’t we need to get in the habit of looking for indications of God’s active presence in our life no matter what is happening? No, it may not be easy to do this, but we must try. John Piper says that every day God is doing perhaps 10,000 different things in our life, but we will only be dimly aware of perhaps three of those things. The numbers are arbitrary, but the point is absolutely right. We barely get a glimmer of all that God is doing in us, through us, to us, and for us. We’re like little kids looking through a keyhole. At best we see a sliver of what lies on the other side of the door. We often mistake that “sliver” for the whole truth of what is going on. Look, God knows what He is doing. He’s never clueless even when we don’t have a clue.  

How crucial it is to stay faithful to God in times of suffering. How important it is to keep praying, meditating on His Word, giving worship, and asking Him to keep us faithful; to keep us spiritually strong. He will do it! God is that great. But God is great for one other reason: He will put an end to suffering.  

God Will Put an End to Suffering 

In the main, Joseph’s sufferings were over. Yes, he would have the usual challenges of daily living and the time when he will be face-to-face with his evil brothers but for now, if ever a man was “living the dream,” it was Joseph. He has gone from slave to national savior, from being a prisoner to a prince. God had it planned all along. God has your future planned as well. Hebrews 12:7 – 11 says: 

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons…. He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 

Our pains in life have the effect of growing our character in righteousness. In other words, suffering in the grace of God makes us better, wiser, and more Christlike.  

For the distant future, God has that covered as well. In Romans 8:18 the apostle Paul writes, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” This future will be ours upon our passing and yet it will be for all of creation as well when Jesus Christ comes again.  

So, by God’s grace, suffering will be gone. Through our suffering God is making something amazing in us and for us. I thought of no better way to sum up what I have tried to share in this message than by relating a story Joni Tada shared about the violin master, Yitzhak Perlman. There are few rivals for Mr. Perlman’s talent. This was proven during a concert in 1995. Not long into a piece, a string on Perlman’s violin suddenly snapped, and everyone in the audience could hear it. Now you need to understand that Perlman had polio as a child which has left him unable to walk without braces on his legs and using crutches. When he comes on stage he always walks methodically and slowly until he reaches a chair placed near the conductor. Then he puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, bends down, picks up his violin, nods to the conductor, and proceeds to play. So, when that string snapped, Mr. Perlman was not able to simply stroll off the stage and get a new one. What then was he to do? Almost everyone knows you can’t play a symphonic work with just three strings. But Perlman was undaunted. He closed his eyes, and after a moment of thought, signaled the conductor to begin again. What quickly became apparent was that Perlman was recomposing the piece in his head as he went along. He was literally inventing new fingering positions to coax the notes needed from his three-stringed violin.

As you can imagine, when the piece concluded, the audience exploded with applause and shouts of utter joy. Mr. Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, and said in a soft, reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.” Pain and suffering give us that chance. God can allow us to take what is left of our life and coax something new, different, and amazing from it. ¹ 

God does this because He is great. So, if you’re reading this and you find that your pains, struggles, and sufferings have caused you to draw back from God, I pray you will now turn back fully to Him. Your suffering is not the final word on your existence. God is at work. You can still be blessed. You can still make an incredible life with what you have left.  

For Further Reading 

If God is Good, Randy Alcorn 

A Place of Healing, Joni Eareckson Tada