Our present chapters suggest this. Joseph’s affliction, begun among his brethren, is now continued among strangers. His brethren had already hated him, and put him in the pit, and thence taken him to sell him as a bond-slave; an evil woman of the Egyptians now falsely accuses him, and he is put in prison, and then another Egyptian, whom he had served and befriended, forgets him and leaves him. But, however it may be with him, whether at home or abroad, God is with him. This becomes the very characteristic of his history. Chapter xxxix.; Acts vii. For, in His way with His elect, God’s _sympathy_ comes first, and then His _power_, the sympathy which accompanies them through their sorrow, and then the power which delivers them out of it. We are prone to desire present ease, and would have all inconvenience and contradiction removed at once. But this is not _His_ way. When at Bethany "Jesus wept;" and afterwards, but not till afterwards, He said, "Lazarus, come forth." Nature would have had the death, which had called forth the tears, anticipated. We judge that we might have been spared many a trial, and we reason it out as a clear, unquestioned conclusion, that God had power. As the friends of the family at Bethany said, Could not this man, that opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? But they reasoned imperfectly, because they reasoned partially; that is, only on the _power_ of Christ. We ought to (and we should, had we but bowels in Christ) very chiefly value the age or dispensation of His sympathy; it gives _Himself_ to us in so peculiar a way. And this sympathy was eminently Joseph’s, in this day of his affliction. As we said, that "God was with him" is characteristic of his condition. And he had abundant evidence of this. As soon as he is in Potiphar’s house, all under his hand, committed to him by his master, prospers. And change of scene works no change in this; for as soon as he is in prison, the same record we read of him, and the same circumstances we see around him. The keeper of the prison puts the same confidence in him that Potiphar his master had; and under his hand in the prison all things prosper, as they had in the Egyptian’s house. So that Joseph had full witness from God, that God was sufficient for him. It was not for such an one to leave the help of the Lord for the help of the creature. But Joseph craves the remembrance and the sympathy of the butler, and would have him give him a good word with the king his master. This was natural. Joseph had befriended the butler of the king, and such an one was able to befriend him. His craving of his sympathy is not to be condemned on any natural, human, or even moral grounds. But whether it was quite worthy of _Joseph_ to do so may be questioned, whether it was quite the way which _faith_ would have suggested.