Read Part One Here
A PURPOSEFUL LIFE; OLD TESTAMENT STORIES
GOD MEANS IT FOR GOOD
PART VIII
"I, Joseph, had my ten brothers come before me today... They bowed down before me.... They told me they had come to Egypt to buy grain because of the famine... They did not recognise me... To them I am an Egytian official... But I recognised them... And I remembered a long forgotten scene the moment they bowed down before me.... A scene I had put out of my mind for many years already... It was a scene of me being before these men telling them of a dream I had had... In that dream they were bowing down to me... They laughed at me at that time... That was twenty-one years ago...I was seventeen years old at that time...At that time I did not know how that could happen...I certainly never expected it to happen in Egypt.. I expected it to happen in Canaan...In my father Jacob's tent...So I put that dream.... Or in fact these dreams.... For I had two dreams... Out of my mind when I got to Egypt.... Until today... For today the impossible has become possible... My dreams have come true... My brothers have bowed down to me... Only God could have made that happen... With Him nothing is impossible... I decided that I needed to test my brothers... So I told them they are spies who have come to check out the land."... Please read the typed out attachment when you will learn that Joseph remembers his dreams when his brothers bow down before him...
ATTACHMENT A PURPOSEFUL LIFE; OLD TESTAMENT STORIES
GOD MEANS IT FOR GOOD
PART VIII
When Joseph's brothers come before him and bow down to him, God reminds him of his God-given dreams. At that time he was seventeen year old and still living with his family in Canaan as you can read in Genesis 42:8-9
Although Joseph recognised his brothers, his brothers did not recognise him. Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, "You are spies. You have come to see where our land is unprotected."
Joseph may originally have thought that his dreams would be fulfilled in his father's tent but God had never shown him where these dreams were to be fulfilled. It must have been such a bitter-sweet moment for he will not only have remembered these dreams themselves, he will have remembered that he had gone to his family members to tell them that they would bow down to him. O, how full of pride he had been, how full of arrogance, how full of foolishness. He recognises these things now, but he had not then. Moreover, he recognises that God has been the source behind his brothers' scheme to sell him as a slave to Egypt so that godly character could be formed in him. It is now time to test his brothers to find out if they have changed.
Read Part Nine HERE
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