Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; February 4, 2024
Readings: Genesis 41:1-16 (children’s talk), 37-52; Arcana Coelestia §5246.2, 3
So at the beginning of today’s story, Joseph is in prison. Then, out of the blue, he’s put in front of the king of Egypt. I talked to the children about Pharaoh’s dreams, so we aren’t going to focus on those now. Our focus is on Joseph’s experience. This slave is brought before Pharaoh after years of sitting in prison… and he doesn’t just interpret the king’s dreams, he proceeds to tell him exactly how he should prepare for the famine that is coming (Gen. 41:33-36). Our next reading describes how Pharaoh responds when Joseph is finished speaking [read vv. 37-52].
So in the space of a few hours, Joseph goes from being a slave in prison to being the administrator of Egypt—effectively the ruler of Egypt. Pharaoh puts his signet ring on Joseph’s hand, and that’s really significant (v. 42). That ring was a symbol of Pharaoh’s authority… and he puts it on Joseph’s hand (see AC §§5316, 5317). All of Egypt bows to Joseph (v. 43). And Egypt was a powerful nation—so Joseph had suddenly become one of the most powerful people in the world. And the story emphasizes the suddenness of this transformation. When Joseph is taken out of prison, we’re told, “they brought him quickly out of the pit” (v. 14).
What we’re going to reflect on now is this sudden change from bad to good. The story consistently refers to Joseph’s prison as a “pit,” which implies that when he is taken out of prison, he is physically lifted up. He is lifted out of the confines of the pit into the free air. He is lifted from wretchedness into glory. And of course, in the internal sense of the Word, Joseph symbolizes something that exists within us. This story is about a kind of lifting up that the Lord can accomplish within our spirits. And He can accomplish it suddenly.
It’s not like we can be “saved” in an instant. There isn’t a magical formula that will make all of our troubles just roll up and disappear. A lot of things in this world get falsely advertised as miracle cures. “Buy this big TV, and you will be truly happy.” Then, lo and behold, we buy the big TV, and our troubles remain. Many people are—justifiably—suspicious of anything that’s supposed to be a “miracle cure.” Sometimes people do assert that the Lord will take all of our troubles away in an instant, but it doesn’t work that way. He invites us to grow with Him forever.
But, with all that said, He can lift us out of the pit. And sometimes He does seem to do that all at once. Sometimes our spirits are filled with clouds and gloom, and then He breaks the clouds open. This doesn’t mean that all of our troubles are gone forever. This sudden deliverance from darkness, or from evil, doesn’t mean that we’ll never to have to fight evil again. The point is simply that the Lord can deliver us. He can lift us up.
And what we need to do is hold on to this truth. We need to believe it. When we’re in the pit; when we’re in a state of spiritual temptation, or hopelessness, or loneliness; when we’re fighting with an evil that we just can’t seem to beat, it means something to believe that the Lord can lift us up. He isn’t a pill that we pop. We can’t say His name and expect that evil will vanish like we just woke up from a bad dream. But we don’t have to crawl out of the pit, one excruciating inch at a time, either. The Lord can deliver us.
We’ll turn now to the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church, to a passage that talks about the symbolism of bringing Joseph out of the pit. The Doctrine says clearly that Joseph’s time in the pit symbolizes a state of temptation (see AC §§4728, 5037, 5246). We read: [AC §5246.2, 3].
This reading emphasizes the uncleanness of “the pit.” Prisons aren’t known for being clean places; and prisons in the ancient world were surely worse than modern prisons. That uncleanness is what this reading especially associates with temptation. When we’re in temptation, we carry an oppressive sphere around with us. Other people can’t necessarily detect it, but we know it’s there. We feel as though we’re trapped in a dirty place. The reading says that while we’re in this state, our spirits are in the midst of an unclean cloud. Which is interesting, because when people are in a bad mood, we’ll say that they’ve “got a black cloud hanging over them.”
But when the state of temptation comes to an end, that cloud is dispersed. A temptation is a spiritual battle between the things within us that are good and true and the things within us that are evil and false. The purpose of temptation is to enable us to know and to reject the things within us that are evil and false. That’s why we enter into that unclean state: we have to face evil in order to reject evil. We’re allowed to feel the uncleanness of evil, because when we do, we gain the ability to say—more clearly than ever before—“Lord, I don’t want this.”
And at some point, when the Lord knows that we’ve made our choice, the temptation comes to an end. The cloud is dispersed. The Lord lifts us up. He shows us something beautiful that we had forgotten, or He feeds our hearts with love—and we feel the wonder of that love. He restores our hope. He gives us peace.
What do we have to do to get there? Well, what did Joseph do right? What enabled the Lord to bless Joseph so richly? If we look to the literal sense of today’s story, we find a simple answer: Joseph trusted in the Lord. When he was brought before Pharaoh, he said that he wasn’t the one who would interpret the dreams—“God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace” (Gen. 41:16). In spite of the bewildering circumstances, Joseph was confident that the Lord was present, and that the Lord would speak through him. And the really amazing thing is that Joseph was holding on to that confidence in God after years of slavery. We read that he was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh (v. 46); he was seventeen when his brothers turned against him (Gen. 37:2). He was a slave for thirteen years. He was in prison for at least two of those years (Gen. 41:1). It’s reasonable to assume that he struggled to hold on to his faith in God as he went through this. But he did hold on. That’s what the Lord needs us to do: He needs us to put our faith in Him, and hold on.
The internal sense of today’s story adds a layer of depth to this idea. Egypt symbolizes the natural mind—the part of us that faces and interacts with this world, as opposed to the spiritual mind, which faces and interacts with the spiritual world. Pharaoh, as king of Egypt, also symbolizes the natural mind (see AC §§5079, 5080, 5244). But Joseph stands for something much higher. He stands for “the heavenly of the spiritual,” which means the goodness, or the joy and the power, of the truth that comes from the Lord (AC §5331, compare §5307). Joseph stands for something from the Lord present deep within our souls. In the literal sense of this story, Pharaoh transfers his authority to Joseph. What this means, in the internal sense, is that the natural mind—the mind that busies itself with worldly thoughts—submits to the heavenly of the spiritual (AC §5310, 5311) It submits to the spirit of the Lord. The natural mind permits itself to be ruled by something higher. When we go through this process, it can feel like we’re losing something. But what’s really happening, when we transfer our authority to Joseph, is that we’re giving the Lord permission to save us. We’re telling Him, “Thy will be done.” And His will is to lift us up.
Our reading from the Heavenly Doctrine compared deliverance from temptation with being lifted out of a pit, and with the disappearance of a filthy cloud. We didn’t read this part, but the same passage also compares deliverance from temptation with escaping from robbers. We read:
One may also compare the state in which temptation takes place to a person's condition when he falls among robbers. When he gets away his hair is disheveled, his face is rough, and his clothes are torn. If he yields in temptation he remains in that state; but if he overcomes in temptation his condition is happy and peaceful once he has attended to his face, combed his hair, and changed his clothes. (AC §5246.4)
The fact that this passage gives three different illustrations of what it’s like to be released from temptation seems a bit like an invitation to look for more illustrations—more passages from the Word that show us what deliverance feels like. And passages like this aren’t hard to find.
When the Lord was crossing the Sea of Galilee with His disciples, their boat was caught in a storm that threatened to sink it. That storm is a picture of hell’s will to drown us with falsity (AE §§419.24, 514.22). We read:
And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling…. And they awoke [the Lord] and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Hush, be silent!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. (Mark 4:37-39)
Later, the Lord was met by a man who was possessed by a legion of demons—a man who lived naked among the tombs, a man so wild that even chains could not restrain him (Luke 8:27, 29). That man’s condition is a picture of a spirit oppressed by hell. But those demons cowered before the Lord (vv. 28, 31). At His command, they fled from the man that they’d possessed, and entered the bodies of pigs and threw themselves into the sea (v 33). And when other people came running to see what had happened, we’re told that they “found the man from whom the demons had departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” (v. 35).
And then there’s the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal son left his home and wasted his money, and ended up destitute. He got a job feeding pigs, and would happily have eaten the pigs’ food, but no one gave him anything (Luke 15:12-16). His condition is a picture of the wretchedness of a selfish life. But when that man chose to go home, and ask for forgiveness and submit himself to his father, his father ran to him. “But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (v. 20). And then his father—who clearly represents the Lord—said, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet” (v. 22).
The turning point, in all of these stories, is a moment in which somebody looks to the Lord. The disciples cry out “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:38). The possessed man meets the Lord at the shore (Luke 8:27). The prodigal son goes home (15:20). And in all of these stories, deliverance comes suddenly. The storm is hushed. The possessed man returns to his right mind. The father runs to his son. Joseph is lifted up.
When we experience deliverance—when the clouds break, when we feel the forgiveness of the Lord—we aren’t meant to conclude that our troubles are gone for good. But on the other hand, if God can save us once, then God can save us as many times as we need to be saved. His hope is that sooner or later we’ll learn to believe that. If we hold on to Him, sooner or later every night will end, and the morning will come.
Amen.