Today’s Readings
Context
There is no legitimate reason that Israel should exist today. They should be like the Hittites and Amorites - tribes from the ancient past that were relegated to history's dustbin. They should have never been a nation in the first place, but God performed a miracle. Here, the tribes could have died in the famine, but God placed Joseph at the Pharaoh's right hand. Egypt. Assyria. Babylon. Rome. Muslims. Germany. Time and again the people of God have been threatened to their very existence. And every time God came through.
It was not because of Israel's fidelity or merit.- they were seldom faithful to God in the OT years. But when God chooses, calls, and makes a people his own, he does not abandon them. He preserves, protects and defends them to the end of time.
That is good news to a sinner like me. In my 52 years as a Christian I've been unfaithful to God more than I want to admit or ruminate on, but he has never given up on me, carrying on his work to completion until the day of Christ (Philippians 1:6).
In today's reading, you see God using Joseph to preserve the nation during the 7 bad years. Yes, the brothers continued to scheme even after Jacob was dead, but Joseph was God's tool to preserve those he chose as his own.
God's promises never fail.
Devotional - Putting the Past in the Past
It was a time of grief as they buried their father, but for Joseph's brothers it was also a time of stress and fear. They carried with them the memory of a terrible wrong they had committed against their brother, imprisoning him and selling him into slavery in Egypt. And now their brother was the second most powerful man in the world.
And dad was not around to protect them anymore!
They were afraid that now that Jacob was gone Joseph might use his power to exact vengeance against them for what they had done to him. Who could blame him, after all? To save themselves, they concocted a lie that Jacob had asked Joseph to show mercy to his brothers. Such a scheme was unnecessary, for Joseph had learned one of life's most important lessons. He told his brothers not to fear him and assured them that he had no intent to rob God's right of revenge. Then, he made an amazing statement of faith in God (in Genesis 50:20).
You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result.
He believed in the goodness of the God who rules the world, and even though he knew that his brothers had willfully sought to harm him, the power of God changed man's evil into good. He was not holding a grudge or dwelling on the evil that had been done to him. He was dwelling on the goodness of God and the good that he had done in spite of it all.
There is much in Joseph's response that is worthy of imitation. He dwelt on God's goodness instead of the real (or imagined) hurts from people. He trusted God's sovereign power to bring good out of evil. He refused to usurp God's right to respond to evil.
But there is one more thing he did that I would like to point out. It is something that many of us do not do - to our own great spiritual harm.
Joseph put the past in the past!
Too many Christians are living in the past. Some are stuck on mistakes they made in the past and cannot seem to receive the forgiveness God gives. Some are fixated on injuries and hurts, holding onto the bitterness and anger that saps spiritual joy and leaves people in bondage. Some may think that their spiritual successes in the past were enough to carry them through today.
The past shapes us, gives us memories of both joy and pain. But the past must never control us. Jesus Christ died to free us from the sins of the past - both those we committed and those that were committed against us. Once we come to Christ, we are given the Spirit to renew us day by day, to give us joy, peace, power, victory and grace every day. We must live in God's grace today and not be enslaved by the past.
Lord, I thank you for every blessing and every challenge of the past, but I thank you that I do not have to be a slave to it. You have broken the chains of sin, you have freed me! May I walk in your grace daily.
Think and Pray
Do you hold on to hurts and injuries of the past or do you trust God for the future enough to forgive and release those hurts to him?
Do you trust God's power to preserve and protect you no matter what, or do you panic in fear?
Do you
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