Joseph: A type of Christ

Gen. 45:7 And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.
Gen. 45:8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
The story of Joseph's life is one that is included in most children's bible story books. The love of his father, betrayal of his brothers, and slave to prince progression in Egypt make for a captivating story. However, this story, like every other one in the scriptures, is for more than entertainment purposes, it was to give the Old Testament saints a shadow of the coming Messiah, and preserved to show us God's eternal plan and sovereignty in carrying that plan out.
The story starts with a son, greatly beloved of the father, even over all his other brethren. So Christ from eternity past is the Son greatly loved by the Father, the one through whom all his brethren are loved.
However his brothers did not love him, but hated him and devised a plan to kill him. They did not kill him themselves, but handed him over to the gentiles to do the work for them. In like manner, our Savior was not loved by us initially, but we hated him and were at enmity with him. In fact his own kinsmen in the flesh, as well as those who would be later adopted into his family, devised a plan to kill him, and they turned him over to the gentile Romans to do the deed for them.
Joseph was brought to Egypt as a slave and before long found himself unjustly imprisoned, his journey to the seat at the right hand of the King of Egypt began in the humblest place possible, a prison slave. Jesus was born in a stable, thought by many to be nothing more than a cave in the ground, to the world he was seen as nothing more than the illegitimate son of a carpenter. The king of glory, came to be the only savior of mankind's plight, and it began in the basest manner imaginable.
In spite of all this, Joseph continued to serve and glorify God and he was promoted a position - so that when the world was starving, and his brethren who had thought to kill him had no other place to turn but to him - they found that their attempt to kill him had indirectly resulted in their own salvation through his mercy. Is this not the mirror image of our Savior? Who through his sinless life and death was raised again and exalted to the right hand of the Father, where he ever lives to make intercession for us. And when we realize that our famished soul has no other place to turn, we find that hand in whom our fate rests, is the one we hated even to his death, and yet in the words of the hymn writer, "Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sins!"

Cities of refuge

Num. 35:12 And they shall be unto you cities for refuge from the avenger; that the manslayer die not, until he stand before the congregation in judgment.
Throughout the Old Testament we have many pictures, types, and foreshadowings of Christ. Many times they come in the form of people; Abraham, Moses, David, and many others were a picture of the coming Messiah. However there are also times when inanimate objects and even certain ceremonies and days picture aspects of our Lord. The Cities of Refuge are one of those inanimate objects that give us a colorful illustration of part of what Christ would accomplish.
In order to see Christ as the City of Refuge we must see ourselves as those who had committed manslaughter and in need of a protector. We met that criteria in two ways. First, we were present by representative in Adam when he effectively killed all his descendants through the original sin (Rom. 5:12). Secondly, we were guilty in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, who was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him (Isa. 53:5). So while we might say we did not personally go out looking to kill either time, it does not change the fact that we were guilty of blood in both cases.
When a man was guilty of manslaughter, it was expected that a death penalty of sorts was placed on him in that the family of the deceased would look to enforce the law of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. We have here further continuity in the illustration, for we were by nature the children of wrath. I have heard this explained as though we ran to Christ to escape Satan, the accuser of the brethren, (and I suppose in a way that is true). However, it much closer to a correct understanding to see God as the offended family member, it was his wrath and condemnation we were under, not Satan's!
So here we are, guilty of the blood of an innocent man, whether intentional or not and we have heavy on our heads the impending and inevitable wrath of God. Our only hope is to fly to some mountain, to a Rock of Ages, to a City of Refuge and cast ourselves upon it in faith that it can withstand the fury of the pursuing party until the day of our trial. As Paul told the Corinthians that the Rock in the wilderness was Christ, so I say that refuge for us was only found in Christ.
All physical illustrations have their limitations when attempting to picture something spiritual, and this one is no exception. The striking difficulty here is that God is (by Christ) the slain innocent, he is the vengeful family member, he is the City of Refuge itself, and he is the judge that will eventually proclaim us just (albeit not for our innocence, but for the righteousness of Christ for us). But is it not fitting that in a foreshadowing of our redemption, its greatest problem is that God is "too" present and active? For in our salvation the same is true, God is both just and the justifier! (Rom. 3:26)