The Eight Portraits of Joseph

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Joseph, adored by his father, despised by his brothers, owned by his enemies, employed by a foreign king, then reunited with his family – it’s not about you.

Week 4 of It’s Not About You took us back into Genesis to study the life story of a man that mimics Jesus himself, Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph. The message today actually inspired two images, both requiring color in order to communicate properly. Instead of posting the concept drawings and notes I made during worship, I created a digital drawing of each image to translate what went on in my head.

8 Portraits of Joseph - watermarked

The Eight Portraits of Joseph

The core of Joseph’s life progresses through eight key stages, eight separate chapters of a life, eight portraits of a man.  As Ray was teaching us about each stage of Joseph’s life, I spent time contemplating on the emotional and physical environment where Joseph found himself, settling on a color to adequately represent that stage.

Portrait 1: The Favorite Son 

Portrait one is yellow; bright, warm and comforting. As Joseph’s story begins, he is the favored son by his father, Jacob (that’s Jacob that coerced his father, Issac, into giving him the birth rights due to his older brother, Esau. Yeah, that Jacob). Joseph’s in a pretty good place. As a sign of his esteem, Jacob has an elaborate coat made for Jacob, the garment we know as the “coat of many colors” (subtly alluded to in the overall image). All things considered, Joseph has it made.

Portrait 2: The Despised Brother

Portrait two is a drab, dark green; symbolizing discontent and envy. Joseph is not an only child. Naturally, his siblings do not appreciate the favoritism he’s receiving from their father, Jacob. The flashy coat was the last straw in a long line of offenses. With Judah instigating the deal, Joseph’s brothers devise a plan to remove him from the equation and earn their father’s favor by default. Joseph will be sold into slavery, his coat strategically torn and dipped in an animal’s blood, and the trail covered by explaining how Joseph was torn to shreds by wild animals to their father. The plan seemed impeccable.

Portrait 3: Enslaved

Portrait three is a drab, dark green; drab to make you taste the awkwardness experienced by Joseph’s brothers, green to symbolize the envy that awkwardness spawned. Judah and his brother’s observed a caravan of Ishmaelites passing through on their way to Egypt and chose to capitalize on an opportunity to get rid of Joseph without carrying the guilt that would follow murder. For twenty shekels of silver (about $228 USD in today’s conversion rate), life as Joseph knew it was over. He became legal property to a band of foreign traders. Jacob was destroyed at learning of the “death” of his beloved Joseph, to the wrath of wild animals, as his other sons re-told the scene.

Portrait 4: The Pure Servant

Through every stage of Joseph’s life, his constant was purity. Purity in body and in spirit in complete devotion to his God. Pure white, the universal symbol of purity, the fourth portrait of Joseph.

Upon reaching Egypt, Joseph’s ownership changed hands; the Ishmaelites sold him to the captain of the Pharaoh’s guards, Potiphar. Joseph, a hunk in modern vernacular, drew the eye of Potiphar’s wife. She immersed herself in the pursuit of Joseph’s body, taking control of a moment when her husband was absent to seduce the object of her lust. The scenario did not play out with Joseph becoming Mrs. Potipher’s Mr. Grey, like she had hoped. Joseph ran, as his master’s wife literally tore the clothes off his body! Enraged by the rejection she’d experienced, Potipher’s wife created a scene using Joseph’s clothes, accusing Joseph of attempting to rape her and condemning him to prison.

Portrait 5: The Slandered Prisoner

As a result of his devotion to purity, Joseph was imprisoned in, what I imagine as a dank, dirty environment. Dusty, blue-grey was the only color I imagined to represent the coldness Joseph must have felt in this chapter of his story.

Joseph’s life and legal status changes once again, he is now property of the Egyptian government, as an inmate. While serving his time, some of the pharaoh’s servants are imprisoned with him. Joseph brings out one of his innate big guns, and interprets the dreams of the two servants; a cup bearer and a baker. The dreams become reality, as Joseph predicted, and the cup bearer was restored to his position, beginning to create a path for Joseph into the royal court.

Portrait 6: The Celebrated Leader

Purple, the rarest, most expensive dye in Joseph’s culture; obtainable only by royalty. Now a member of the royal court, Joseph’s sixth portrait is purple, but not free of some subtle dark streaks to remind him of his past.

Despite being forgotten by the restored chief cup bearer, Joseph receives an opportunity to interpret a dream for the Pharaoh himself. His successful interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream earned him a get out of jail free card, straight into the Pharaoh’s employment, as governor over Egypt, no less. Distributing food in Egypt, during the seven-year famine predicted through Pharaoh’s dream by Joseph, becomes a responsibility of the governor and leads into the next portrait.

Portrait 7: The Brother Who Restores

The color for portrait seven didn’t come quite as easily as the others, how can a color represent the emotional release of restoration on its own? I thought further about what Joseph restored and the catalyst for its restoration. He restored his family through food distribution. Red and yellow are colors proven to inspire hunger (hence major fast food chains utilize them in the marketing designs), what color results from combining red and yellow? Orange. To represent the dirtiness of restoring a broken family, particularly this family, streaks of brown flood the orange hue.

As Joseph is distributing food in Egypt, familiar faces approach from the line of families praying for food; the faces of his brothers. Joseph is face with a choice, given his position. Feed the men who are his family by blood, or condemn the men to sold him into slavery and completely altered the course of his life to certain starvation by denying them the rations they wait for. His presence unbeknownst to his brothers, they approach and reach for their portion. Joseph stops them and accuses them of being foreign spies and locks them up for three days, despite their denial of any conspiracy. Joseph has a plan.

Portrait 8: The Reunited Son

Joseph’s story now comes full circle, back into the arms of his father Jacob along with the rest of his family. To symbolize this, the final portrait mirrors portrait one, the same warm yellow.

At the end of the three day stent in the Egyptian prison, Joseph reveals his identity and offers a deal to his brothers. Return home with enough food to feed their families, but leave the youngest brother behind. Confess to Jacob all that has happened and return for both members of their family.

These eight portraits of Joseph’s life are a foreshadowing of another’s, Jesus. From his rightful place at his father’s side, to despised by his brothers, sold into  captivity, brutalized despite his purity, justified his accusers by his mercy, and now back at the right hand of his father.

What else can we learn from Joseph’s ordeal besides the imagery predicting Jesus? God is sovereign, no matter your situation. We have a responsibility to perform the tasks God directs us toward, but his sovereignty follows the mission through to completion, even when we drop the ball. Judah was the instigator of Joseph’s plight. Jesus is a direct ancestor of Judah. Despite Judah’s envy and poor decision-making, God’s son was born out of his blood line. God’s sovereignty is balanced with our responsibility.

Sovereignty Balanced With Responsibility - watermarked

The background of this image is a deep, heavy blue which reflects the weight of our personal responsibility. Our success or failure at fulfilling our responsibility can bring us pleasure or it can result in pain. Judah’s irresponsibility brought with it pain; first for Joseph, then for himself. God’s sovereignty opened the doors for his ultimate mission, delivering the Messiah, to succeed through Judah despite his failure with Joseph. God’s providence is the only foundation we have for experiencing pain in life. As we learned during week one, God doesn’t owe us an explanation, even for our pain.

God’s sovereignty flows like a waterfall over our responsibility. The flow separates at the top of the image, curling back together as it splashes against the bottom of the page. Turning the image upside down reveals a heart shape forming over our responsibility. Further inspection of the heart reveals the updraft of the waterfall of sovereignty impedes on the center of the heart, breaking it in half. Like any good parent, it pains God when a child fails and must experience the consequences of their actions. With greater ability than any other parent, God’s sovereignty allows an ultimate goal to be accomplished through the consequential pain.

Passion

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Here we are in the third week of It’s Not About You, a series where we’ve focused on popular stories in the Bible to clear up the lines that are often blurred  and expose that the story is not about us, it points to something bigger. Today obliterated an analogy I’m sure many of you have heard, and some have even used, comparing the story of David and Goliath to significant problems we face in life.

Before we delve into the arrogant narcissism hiding behind this comparison, let’s review this classic underdog story. Israel faced a stalemate in a war with the Philistines. The Philistines decided to propose a deal to end the conflict, allow the strongest warriors from each side to face off in a dual, the side whose warrior prevailed would earn ultimate victory. The Philistines nominated a borderline super-human named Goliath and waited for Israel to respond. David, a young shepherd who didn’t meet the minimum physical guidelines to join the army, delivered food to his brothers with an ulterior motive of bringing information of his brothers’ well being back to his father. While in the camp, David hears Goliath taunting the Israeli army and the Jewish God. Enraged by the insults slung at his God, David is compelled to act. He pushes through a wall of Israeli soldiers, denounces their cowardice for not standing up to this heathen, and demands King Saul allow him to represent his God and his country against the Philistine agitator. Refusing the typical armor and weaponry bestowed to a warrior, David entered the fight armed with a sling and a few smooth stones. With a flick of his wrist, David buries one of those stones deep into Goliath’s forehead, finishes the war by using Goliath’s own sword to behead him, then earns the right to marry King Saul’s daughter for securing Israel’s victory.

The plight of David and Goliath is often alluded to when someone faces an arduous situation or a daunting task. We imagine ourselves in the place of David, and label the oppressor our Goliath. We’ve completely misconstrued the imagery by doing this. Goliath is not an obstacle to overcome, he represents ultimate evil; in a sense, he is Satan. As much as your ego would like to think, you are not David. David is the one man who stands against evil to rescue his people, David represents Jesus. Last, the Israeli army is not everyone around you who is not strong enough to handle your situation. You are the coward, trusting in your own ability and retreating in the face of your opposition.

So what set David apart from the other, much more qualified soldiers that day? Passion. David’s passion for God, his dedication to reaching people and his vehement stand to face anyone who opposed his God. That was the secret to his success against Goliath.

Some of my favorite Hollywood quotes come from movies directed by Steven Nolan. Near the top of my list is a quote from Inception:

“What’s the world’s most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.”

David was infected by that parasite. I strive to let it sink deeper. An artist and mentor who worked closely with me to develop a visual ministry inspired me this way: “Don’t go out and try to set the world on fire. Set yourself on fire and see if it catches.”

Today’s drawing provided an excellent opportunity to play with a new computer drawing program I purchased for a logo design project. I love how it turned out!

Passion - David and Goliath - watermarked copy

The ominous black wave is Goliath, a fist forms from the crest and threatens to pound its target. This wave is evil, God’s ultimate enemy. A small, yellow wave retreats into the bottom right corner in trying to avoid the beating that approaches, appropriately represented in a cowardly yellow hue. This wave is the Israelite army in the story, us in modern  reality. A small spark of light splits off from the yellow wave, boldly standing between his people and ultimate evil. This was David that day for Israel, this is Jesus every day for us.

You are not David, but you can take a stand.

Noah – The Original Doomsday Prepper

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Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

Julie and I occasionally enjoy watching Doomsday Preppers on NatGeo. Gaining popularity through all the recent apocalyptic, 12-21-12, Mayan prophecy hype, each show tells the story of three families and their efforts to prepare for every possible end-game scenario. Some episodes are quite entertaining and others are pretty educational. To conclude each installment, National Geographic’s “preparedness experts” critique each group’s readiness in case of an apocalyptic event. My personal favorite was a guy in Arizona who re-designed the in-ground family pool into a self-sustaining ecosystem stocked with a vegetable garden, suspended chicken coop and Tilapia pond. Several segments I found completely laughable. The couple who turn all the lights off in the house every night and practice navigating through their property carrying loaded hand guns seemed a little nuts until they revealed teaching themselves some obscure east Asian language to communicate without intruders understanding them; that officially crossed the line into psycho-crazy. Then there’s the Faraday cage guy.  He’s built multiple storage facilities and underground bunkers designed as Faraday cages. The Faraday cage, named after its inventor, 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, is composed of chain-linked metal walls that shield its contents from static electric fields and electro-magnetic radiation by redistributing electric charges around the exterior walls. The guy building these is convinced an EMP resulting from a massive solar flare will wipe out all electronic and electrically dependent aspects of  life as we know it, resulting in a world-wide apocalyptic event. The major flaw in his plan was getting to these Faraday safe-houses without today’s computerized automobiles. At least the weather radio buried in the box in the desert will be safe!

We make jokes about people preparing for the end of society as we know it, particularly those who seem to go overboard. However, as we heard in week 2 of It’s Not About You this morning, Christians should lead the preparatory charge because we know what’s coming and we know the warning signs!

I’m sure I would have been one of the skeptics talking about Noah, the crazy old fool in the Old Testament. Noah proposed building a contraption no one had ever heard of for a weather event never experienced in the history of the earth to save people who really didn’t care to listen. Add to that, the earth-encompassing flood Noah prophesied and prepared for did not occur until 120 years after he started construction on the boat! Noah had an endless list of “why not’s” to keep the ark from being constructed, but he moved forward anyway.

Last week, we were encouraged to approach that thing in our gut that seems impossible to accomplish but nags anyway with a “why not” attitude. Today, we take that attitude a step further, turning attitude into action. After we accept our passion as our call to action, true faith responds by turning the vision into reality.

What would today look like if Noah, the great-grandfather of doomsday preppers, had not followed through on his project; building the ark, convincing his family to get on board (not to mention all those animals), and continually sharing the apocalyptic motivations of his mission with the public? According to another NatGeo show, society would now be run by coyotes, but no, the coyotes wouldn’t have survived either!

The historic events of that world-wide flood and Noah’s efforts to rebuild society are both history and prophecy. Speaking prophetically, the impending flood is a coming apocalypse, the ark is Christ, Noah is the Christian.

Are you prepared?

Why Not?

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We’re starting a new series today titled, It’s Not About You. Over the next few weeks we’ll take a look at the narcissistic side of modern spirituality and learn how our attitudes need adjusting. Drawing one from this series took longer than usual to get started, but came out simple and concise.

If I asked you to define the attitude of American society using a single characteristic, what word would you come up with? Patriotic? Compassionate? My observations require a different adjective; entitled. Everyone deserves something. A raise, a vacation, a positive outcome to whatever situation. Of all the things we could feel entitled to, the one that reigns above all is answers. Answers to any question we can fathom, explanations for other people’s actions, reasons for our failure to receive some other thing we’ve “earned”. No matter who the question is directed towards, modern society stands vehemently static until we have this information. Heaven forbid the answer given is not the preconceived response we’ve determined the question deserves!

In 2 Kings 5, Naaman nearly missed being healed from leprosy because he didn’t like his question’s answer. Naaman was a commander in the Syrian army and a leper. During a raid in Israel, a girl was captured and began working for Naaman’s wife. Learning of his disease, the girl compassionately encouraged Naaman to visit the “prophet of Samaria (a.k.a. Elisha)”, he would be healed. Naaman’s entitlement to healing begins. He pulls rank and has the king of Syria send a letter to the king of Israel, setting up a formal meeting between Naaman and the Israeli king, with the ulterior motive of meeting Elisha and, BAM! No more leprosy. The scheme unfolds as planned, until the actual healing process takes place.

The king of Israel, upset that this diseased Syrian commander usurped his authority to get into his court, reluctantly agreed and Naaman’s date with destiny was set. Avoiding the normal pleasantries, the king sent Naaman directly to Elisha’s house. Bonus for Naaman! The meeting with Elisha, however, did not go as Naaman envisioned. Naaman expected some holy words and spiritual sleight of hand, a flash of burning magnesium would have been a nice touch. Instead, Naaman received some bathing instructions and directions to a less than desirable river to bathe in! In order to wash away his leprosy, Naaman had to submerge himself into the Jordan river seven times. Hearing this infuriated Naaman. Despite expressing his disappointment (showing his tail in front of Elisha) and offering cleaner alternatives for the location of this bath, Elisha calmly shuts the door in Naaman’s face and Naaman storms back to his entourage. His posse looks at him in bewilderment and says, “Seriously, dude? The guy just told you to take a bath to be healed and you’re mad because the water is dirty?! Naaman caves and takes a swim in the Jordan, coming out with skin “like that of a newborn”, completely healed.

God calls us to tasks by planting in us a vision for a specific project and an insatiable passion to see it through. What often frustrates our efforts is our own hesitation as we wait for a popular Christian buzzword from God, confirmation. We continually ask God to reveal why He’s given us a passion to x,y,z and why we should follow through with our idea. Apparently, if we don’t know why we are serving in a particular capacity, the notion must have originated from a questionable source and following through would mean certain demise. Taking a meal to that couple who just brought home a baby and we only know as acquaintances may be awkward and ruin any chances of friendship since they did not invite us. Offering a cold bottle of water to the ragged man at the intersection on a sweltering July day may be offensive because his sign doesn’t mention being thirsty. The point of today’s drawing is we are asking the wrong question. God does not owe us an explanation. He’s worthy of our affection and obedience just because he’s God. An idea is the most resilient parasite known to man. Once an idea strikes, our question should not be why, but why not?

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself in him. John 14:21