Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #14 in Genesis 39, and we will read Genesis 39:20:

And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison.

In our last study we went to the New Testament in order to look at a verse that has a lot to do with what we are reading here.  It says in Matthew 5:25-26:

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

As I mentioned in our last study, a prison is a place where a lawbreaker goes.  According to the law that was broken and the degree of the crime determines the sentence the lawbreaker will receive.  Then he is sent to prison to carry out the sentence, whether five years, 10 years, 20 years, or for his lifetime, as the judge determines. 

God uses a prison as a figure of His wrath because in prison the prisoner is paying for his crime, and we can see how that fits in with God’s whole judgment program.  God has given His Law, and man has broken the Law.  Man is a lawbreaker, and God sentences man to pay the penalty, and the penalty for breaking the Law of God is death. 

Yet Joseph was thrown into prison, not executed.  But because he is in prison, God paints the picture that he is a type and figure of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Remember that we read in the previous verse in Genesis 39 that Potiphar’s wrath was kindled, and Potiphar is typifying God Himself.  So Joseph is in prison receiving the wrath of his master Potiphar, pointing to Christ receiving the wrath of God the Father beginning in the Garden of Gethsemane to the cross, and He was in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.  He experienced the wrath of God, but He was not bearing the sins of His people, and that is an important distinction, but Christ did experience the wrath of God. In other words, He was truly suffering in the garden as He was beginning to come under God’s wrath, and He was in agony,  and “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”  That was not acting.  That was Christ truly suffering, and yet Jesus was innocent.  He had no sin upon Him because all the sins of His people had already been paid for at the foundation of the world. 

That is one thing we can see very clearly regarding Joseph.  Joseph was innocent of the charge that Potiphar’s wife brought against him.  And  it was a false accusation that was brought against the Lord Jesus Christ.  They found fault with Him without a cause.  They had no legitimate reason to bring Him before the Jewish council, nor to bring him before the Roman authorities for crucifixion. 

Again, we read, “Agree with thine adversary quickly,” and we saw that the adversary of the one still in His sins is God Himself, and God requires agreement.  We went into some detail how that can be, and we went to Psalm 51 where the Lord moved David to acknowledge his transgressions against God.  He was not fighting the charges, and he was not claiming innocence, and he was not trying to justify his actions.  He was in full agreement: “You are right, O, God, I am guilty.  I did commit this sin of adultery.  I did commit this sin of murder.  I am guilty, and I do not deserve your mercy.”  And that is what this verse is saying in Matthew 5:25:

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

I mentioned how perfectly that identifies with Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, who cast Joseph into prison.

There is another similar verse in Luke 12:58-59:

When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison.  I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite.

Notice the emphasis on the officer and the officer throwing you into prison.  The Greek word “prison” is pronounced “foo-lak-ay',” and it is Strong’s #5438.  It is also found in Revelation 20 where Satan was cast into the bottomless pit, and it is referred to as his prison.  First, I will read in Revelation 20:2-3:

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

Satan was bound and shut up, so we can see the relationship to a prison.  But he was bound in the “bottomless pit,” which represents hell, or the grave and death.  Of course it was a spiritual condition, as far as Satan was concerned, but nonetheless God is linking the “bottomless pit” to “prison.” 

If the association with being bound and shut up is not enough proof for you, let us go to Revelation 20:7.

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

This is the same Greek word translated as “prison” that is used in Matthew 5:25 and Luke 12:58.  So that means the “bottomless pit” is a prison that was holding Satan, as it were.  And that would give us additional information about a prison.  For one thing, it tells us that a prison does not have to be literal place, but it can be a “condition.”  Satan was in prison over the course of the church age, and we can prove that from the Bible.  It was upon his loosing that he rose up out of the bottomless pit and killed the “two witnesses,” in Revelation 11. Then the church age came to an end.  But over the course of the church age he was also going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he would devour, but that is the same period of time that God says he was in prison, and that is because it was a “spiritual condition.”  The bottomless pit is a figure of hell, or the grave.  In 2Peter 2 God speaks of the fallen angels, and it says in 2Peter 2:4:

For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

You see, they were delivered to chains of darkness in hell, and in Revelation 20 it is referred to as a bottomless pit.  So the bottomless pit and hell are both likened to prison, and that helps us in our understanding of Potiphar, a figure of God, whose wrath was kindled and he threw Joseph, a type of Christ, into prison. What can prison represent?  It can represent the condition of hell, or the condition of being in a bottomless pit, and under the wrath of God.  So this strengthens that idea.  But in addition, if we go to Revelation 9, we will see the phrase “bottomless pit” again.  It says in Revelation 9:1:

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

This “star” is Christ, and Christ has “the keys of hell and death,” according to Revelation 1:18, and we just saw that the “bottomless pit” is hell.  And it goes on to say in Revelation 9:2:

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

Regarding the opening of the bottomless pit, this was something that Mr. Camping years ago thought identified with the loosing of Satan and the judgment on the churches and congregations.  But with more thorough Bible study and God graciously opening our eyes to finetune our understanding, it has been revealed that this opening of the bottomless pit took place on Judgment Day, May 21, 2011.  This was the first of three woes, which are simultaneous, as the three woes identify with the last three trumpets.  The first four trumpets sounded in Revelation 8, and the last verse declares in Revelation 8: “…Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!”  And that pinpoints this as far as it being judgment on the earth with the language, “to the inhabiters of the earth,” and it ties into Jeremiah 25.

But when Christ opened the bottomless pit, out of the pit came a smoke like a great furnace, and the sun and air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.  In other words, the condition of the pit was brought to the world, and that was a condition of the smoke of a great furnace, which was the wrath of God likened to a horrible fire, as well as darkness.  Sometimes God pictures His wrath as a flaming fire, and other times He pictures His wrath as outer darkness.  But they are picturing the same thing, and here the smoke of the furnace and the darkness that was down below in the bottomless pit were loosed and brought to the earth when Jesus Christ opened the pit.  In other words, what happened was that the earth took upon itself the same condition as the bottomless pit.  The things that were in the bottomless pit – the smoke of a great furnace and the darkness – have now risen and turned the earth into hell.  It has turned the earth into the “bottomless pit,” and that is reason God declares in Psalm 9:17:

The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

The wicked have been turned into “hell,” or the “grave.”  It is the word “sheh-ole',” which can be translated both as “hell” and “grave.”  They mean the same thing, and so does the “bottomless pit.”  So the world became like the bottomless pit when God commenced His judgment process on the world.  And we know the Bible confirms that Judgement Day began on the earth on May 21, 2011.  That is when the pit was opened and the smoke arose and darkened the sun.  According to Matthew 24:29, what happened to the sun immediately after the Tribulation?  The sun was darkened.  It ties in because the Tribulation lasted 23 years, or exactly 8,400 days, to May 21, 2011.  Immediately after, the pit was opened and “hell” came to the earth above, and all the nations were turned into hell, and this is where all of us have been living day by day since that time.  We are alive and remaining on the earth that is in the condition of hell, and for those of us who are truly saved, we continue to follow God during this period of time, and we expect to come up out of the womb of hell on the last day to be declared sons of God, just as Jesus Christ did.

I wanted to mention that because we read in Revelation 18:2:

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen…

We are familiar with this.  Historically, when did Babylon fall?  It was after 70 years.   For seventy years Babylon had been triumphant.  And that 70 years typifies God’s judgment on Judah, and that was a historical parable and picture of the Great Tribulation and judgment on the churches and congregations.  Once the 70-year period expired, Babylon fell in that very night.  And Daniel understood by books the time that Jeremiah had said concerning the 70 years.  So we can pinpoint the day that Babylon (this world) fell as May 21, 2011.  Immediately after the Tribulation, Babylon, representing the kingdom of Satan of this world, fell because Christ took the kingdom.  Christ was victorious, and Satan was defeated.  We have talked about that quite a bit, but  I want you to notice what is said next, in Revelation 18:2:

… Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

The Greek word that is translated as “prison” is translated here as “hold” and “cage.”  So we could read it this way: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the prison of every foul spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird.”  Babylon represents the world.  It is the whole kingdom of Satan, all the nations of the world.  They are Babylon.  The world is fallen.  The world has become the prison of every foul spirit, and the prison of every unclean and hateful bird because the world has been turned into hell.  The world is now in the condition of the bottomless pit because the wrath of God is open the world. 

That is the main point we can gather from this,  and that is what we can gather when Joseph’s master took him and put him into prison.  And it was not done gently, but Potiphar was full of wrath because it is a picture of experiencing the wrath of God, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound, and Joseph was there in the prison.  The world has been turned into this prison that God warned about in Matthew 5:25 where it says to agree with your adversary quickly, as well as in Luke 12:58. 

And we, the people of God, are now making an appearance before the judgment seat of Christ, and we are going through the same circumstances in a similar way to Joseph because there is no sin upon us, and God is finding no fault with us, and He will bring us out.  But those who have their sins upon them must pay the very last mite.  They must pay the penalty in full, and that penalty is death.  Their prison stay will conclude with their “second death,” or everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.