Sept. 23-27 - Life and times of Joseph

We’ve spent the last week reading about the life of Joseph and what a great way to end the first month of our reading plan! Joseph is one of the most obvious pictures of Jesus from Genesis and so there are many areas of his life that we could look at to show this. For this blog I’m just going to stick with a few verses from right near the very end.

When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said to one another, “If Joseph is holding a grudge against us, he will certainly repay us for all the suffering we caused him.”

So they sent this message to Joseph, “Before he died your father gave a command: ‘Say this to Joseph: Please forgive your brothers’ transgression and their sin—the suffering they caused you.’ Therefore, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when their message came to him. His brothers also came to him, bowed down before him, and said, “We are your slaves!”

But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people. Therefore don’t be afraid. I will take care of you and your children.” And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

Genesis 50:15-21

Joseph’s brothers knew that what they had done to him was a terrible wrong and they expected him to repay them for their wickedness. Yet we see nothing of the sort from Joseph. What we see is this beautiful picture of abundant mercy and grace given to his brothers who did nothing to earn it and certainly didn’t deserve it. They tried to earn forgiveness by lying to Joseph, not realizing that he had already forgiven them. (how often do we do the same!) Joseph recognized that God’s plan was to use his suffering for good, to save the lives of His people.

We are just like Joseph’s brothers, we have all fallen short and sinned against God. What we all deserve is God’s righteous judgment, and yet through Jesus we receive grace and mercy, the forgiveness of our sin and an inheritance that we could have never earned on our own. Jesus too had to suffer for this, he went to the cross to take the weight of our sin, but he knew that God planned his suffering for the good, and that it would save the lives of His people.

2 Corinthians 4:17 says this, “Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Brothers and sisters we too will go through suffering, but take heart, count it as joy for we know that God is planning this for our good, for our salvation and eternity with Him!