Love = grace + truth. When we respond to others in grace and conduct ourselves in the truth we are living a life of love. One of the ways of conducting ourselves in the truth is by gaining and applying wisdom. Without wisdom, you can’t live the truth. That is what wisdom is: the application of truth to life. You can’t be good, righteous, just, honest, or trustworthy unless you have wisdom. Wisdom brings three things: discernment, discretion, and direction. In today’s post I want to give some illustrations of this in action.
In Deuteronomy 34:9 we find that it was divine wisdom that enabled Moses to lead Israel, and it was that same wisdom that enabled Joshua to succeed him. Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the LORD had commanded Moses.
Another great example of the importance of these three benefits of wisdom is Joseph the son of Jacob who we read about in Genesis 37-50. Joseph was the 11th son of Jacob and the first son to Jacob by his wife Rachel. Jacob loved his wife Rachel more than his other wife Leah (who had already given him 10 sons) so Joseph instantly became the favorite.
Now, Joseph’s other brothers were not the nicest (or the smartest) people in the world either. Simeon and Levi destroyed an entire city in retaliation for their sister Dena being raped by a man from that city. The stress from fleeing after their attack caused Rachel to go into labor. Se died from complications giving birth to Joseph’s younger brother Benjamin. That caused a whole lot of resentment and tension between Jacob (and Joseph) and Leah and her sons. This was further exacerbated when we find out that Rueben was sleeping with Jacob’s concubine Bilhah who was, for all intents and purposes, Joseph’s mother after Rachel died.
At this point, in Genesis 37:2 we find Joseph’s first recorded act, Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
Surprise, surprise, surprise! Do you think that might have had something to do with Rueben sleeping with his stepmother? And what does Jacob do? He honors Joseph by giving him that “coat of many colors” and making him the family heir over his 10 other older brothers! The brothers were so angry at this favoritism that they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Then, being the favorite son, Joseph tells his brothers about dreams that God has given him in which he is elevated as master over them. He does this twice. And his brothers hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
The next time Joseph goes to check on his brothers, he is away from the protection of his father and was stripped, beaten, thrown into a pit, and sold as a slave by his older brothers.
There were several of reasons why Joseph’s brothers hated him so much that they sold him into slavery. But one of those reasons he got into so much trouble with them was because of his lack of wisdom. Joseph lacked all three aspects of wisdom.
He lacked discernment. Joseph did not have any clear insight into the meaning of his dreams. He did not have any understanding of what God was telling him. He had assumptions, but he did not have discernment.
He lacked discretion. No one in this family even knew what discretion was! Dad has more women than he can handle. His sons were responsible for slaughtering an entire city, another son was sleeping with dad’s mistress. There is Joseph who is growing very quickly into a spiteful brat lording his dreams over his brothers out of anger for how they have dishonored his father, caused the death of his mother, and dishonored his mother’s servant Bilhah. All his older brothers want to kill him because they can’t stand how Joseph is being doted on not to mention getting that outrageous coat.
He lacked direction. Leadership has nothing to do with position. Joseph’s biggest mistake living at home was in thinking he was the leader because his daddy said he was the leader. That could not have been further from the truth.
In fact, I want to be so bold as to submit to you that Joseph at the age of 17 when he was sold by his brothers for 20 pieces of silver had not yet begun to learn about leadership. He thought his position as his father’s favorite and being named the heir to the promise of his forefathers were the keys to his leadership. He could not have been more wrong. The things that Joseph learned about leadership could not have been learned where he was because leadership is learning to live and—ironically—until he was a slave Joseph was not really living.
Joseph’s character was what was grown through his troubles after he was sold as a slave. The fact that he was Jacob’s favorite son and the named heir to the covenant promises of God had nothing to do whatsoever with his success in Egypt. That dis not mean anything to the Egyptians. He worked hard and did his best at everything he did. It was through a lot of hard work and a lot of humbling experiences that Joseph started to become wise and became the head servant in Potiphar’s house. God’s hand was with Joseph by growing his wisdom.
As he was growing in wisdom as a slave, he also became very handsome, attracting the adulterous attentions of Potiphar’s wife. That landed him in prison.
While he was in prison, he again rose to become the greatest of the servants and became the helper to the jailer. He made a friend of the Pharaoh’s cupbearer who was thrown in jail with Joseph. Joseph foretold that the cupbearer would be restored to his place in Pharaoh’s court and in return for his interpretation of his dreams, asked only that he remember him and help him get out of prison. But the man forgot for 2 years.
For 13 years things seemed to be going backwards. Nothing was going right. But, when he is called to Pharaoh’s court to explain his dreams, we discover that Joseph has not lost sight of God’s love for him or of the dreams that God had given him.
After Joseph explains Pharaoh’s dreams and what he should do in response to them, we read in Genesis 41:39-45 (NIV),
Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.” So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.”
Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph’s finger. He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. He had him ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and men shouted before him, “Make way!” Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt.”
Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt.
Joseph was given the position because no one was as wise as Joseph in all of Egypt.
Joseph showed wise discernment in understanding Pharaoh’s dreams. He showed wise direction in offering a plan of action by which disaster could be averted. He showed discretion in not volunteering himself for the man to do the job. Now that Joseph had wisdom, God could began to fulfill the visions He had given Joseph 13 years earlier back in Caanan.
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 