Good Friday and the story of Joseph both confront us with the same brutal reality: faithfulness offers no immunity from suffering, and God’s presence does not always mean God’s rescue. Yet in both the prison and the tomb, the Lord was quietly, stubbornly there — and in both cases, the pit turned out not to be the last word.
“When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.” She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.” When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.” Genesis 39:13-23
It is brief and brutal. Joseph’s master “took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in the prison.” That is it. One moment Joseph is trusted; the next he isn’t.
Good Friday is the same. The crowd that had cheered Jesus into Jerusalem shouts for Barabbas. Pilate washes his hands. Jesus is handed over like a parcel no one wants. By midday he is on the cross. By three o’clock, it is finished.
“And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison… But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love.” v20–21
God didn’t remove the circumstances but He was with Joseph in the prison. Present. God goes into the pit with him.
Ever ask this question: where is God in this? The disciples clearly did not know. They scattered. The cry from the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” was pulled directly from Psalm 22, the prayer of a sufferer who feels utterly abandoned.
Yet the psalm does not end in abandonment. It ends in vindication.
The story of Joseph carries the same logic. The Lord was with him in the pit.
We do not call this day Good because it is pleasant. It is good the way surgery is good.
Joseph does not know, on the night he is put in the prison, that this descent is part of an ascent that will one day place him at Pharaoh’s right hand. The disciples do not know, standing at the foot of the cross, that this is the hinge point of history.
The pit is not the end. The prison is not the last word. Why? God was with Joseph and God was with Jesus.
The prison and the tomb was real and God was there in both places.
Missions Paul 