Joseph: His Arms Were Made Strong – A Review by Bob Thomas

The life of Joseph has long been grist for the mill of Sunday School teachers, their pupils often hanging on every word of the story of his remarkable life. Now David Searle has lifted the narrative to a higher level with the publication of this sermon series, making it accessible to those who want to dig deeper into it without going to the trouble of ploughing through the opinions of various scholars, weighing one up against another and risking perplexity rather than enlightenment.

Our author, a highly respected minister within the evangelical wing of the Church of Scotland and no mean scholar as evidenced by his decade as Director of Rutherford House, (a theological research and study centre in Edinburgh) has done the hard yards for us through his own meticulous research, reflection and practical application of the biblical narrative to Christian faith and life.

So we have here a book* which draws us further, much further, into the life of Joseph than ever our Sunday School teachers did all those years ago.

We see how strategic the life of Joseph was in God’s plan of salvation, how in so many ways he prefigured the Lord Jesus Christ, how the Lord’s people should live in the world without being of the world.

Perhaps the very first page of this book will bring enlightenment to many who ponder the imponderable – the efficacy of Christ’s death for those who ‘lived by faith’ yet predeceased him. Searle writes:

But something that would, I suspect, take us rather by surprise and fill us with awe and wonder would be that we would realise that the shadow of the Cross falls both backwards in time as well as forward to its consummation in eternity . . . perhaps nowhere in the whole of the Old Testament . . . would we see the shadow of the Cross more clearly than in the life of Joseph, for Joseph stands so vividly as a type of Christ . . .

From the beginning to the end this book is packed with fresh insights into the life of Joseph and these are used to challenge us to examine ourselves in the light of Scripture as to our own faithfulness in living our lives for Christ before a watching world.