Sent to Preserve a Remnant for Life
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| "Having become the favorite the Pharaoh, Joseph's brothers come to Egypt to request food supplies for their country suffering from famine. He makes himself known to them and pardons them (Genesis XLV, 1-8)" by Marc Chagall |
So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to
me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom
you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves
because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the
famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in
which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to
preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 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. (Genesis 45:4-8).
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ!
A band of brothers have been keeping a shameful
secret. Now, as the saying goes, “the chickens are coming home to roost.”
These brothers, the sons of Jacob, haven’t seen
their younger brother, Joseph, in over twenty years. He was barely old enough
to shave when they, fueled by jealousy and hatred, had sold him to
slave-traders, then covered up their crime by faking his death. For all they know,
Joseph is nothing but dust in the Egyptian wind by now, driven to an early
death by the rigors of servitude.
But dead or alive, Joseph is a daily living
reality in the consciences of his brothers. More than two decades after they’d
tossed him into a pit, his cries for mercy are still echoing in the depths of
their souls. More than two decades after they’d sat around that pit and ate a
meal together, they can still taste the bitter memory of their heartless deed. More
than two decades after their despicable deed, they still remember handing their
father Joseph’s bloody robe and letting the old man think his favorite son had
met his demise at the hand of some feral beast. Now, their shared secret stalks
them night and day.
So pervasive is its influence upon them that
when they experience trouble, they trace its ultimate source to the betrayal of
their brother. When they kneel before the second-in-command of all Egypt and he
accuses them of being spies and demands they bring their youngest brother down
to Egypt as proof of their honesty, they lament to one another, “In truth we
are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul,
when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come
upon us” (Genesis 42:21). In their minds, that dirty little secret from over
two decades earlier is coming back to haunt them.
Once again, out of necessity because of the
continuing famine, the ten plus their baby brother Benjamin find themselves kneeling
in the presence of this powerful man, and he is making life difficult for them.
Judah, evidently learning something from his past sins, refuses to leave Benjamin
behind, because he knows that returning without him would likely be the last
nail in his old father’s coffin. Instead, he begs to take Benjamin’s place
himself.
The tender scene that is about to unfold in
that room is much too private to be shared with outsiders. The man therefore
dismisses everybody but the brothers. Then he breaks down and weeps aloud. The
strangeness, sternness, and sharpness are gone from his voice now, as he speaks
to the brothers in Hebrew, no longer through an interpreter. “I am Joseph!” he
says. “Is my father alive?”
Imagine the shock and terror, when they hear
him say, “I am Joseph!” Sin is the great destroyer, the great tension maker.
Until the brothers have been assured that the barrier between them and him is gone,
they will have no peace of mind.
“Come near to me, please,” Joseph urges. We can
easily imagine how the brothers have kept their distance. Joseph now shows them
not only with words but with actions that he feels no bitterness toward them,
that he has only feelings of love toward them. There is no sadness, no anger in
his heart; there should be none in theirs, now that God has given them back to
one another.
Through the eyes of faith, Joseph has been able
to recognize what God has been working to achieve. Using such unlikely building
materials as the hateful and misguided actions of the brothers two decades
earlier, God has constructed a plan to save many lives, including the lives of
the important family still living in famine-plagued Canaan. “God sent me to
preserve life,” Joseph tells them. “God sent me before you to preserve for you
a remnant on earth.” Here is the key to the entire narrative. The brothers had
sold Joseph to Egypt out of hatred and spite. God overruled their evil intent, using
their action to preserve a remnant, a precious handful of His people, through a
crisis that now threatened them with annihilation.
There is no time to waste. For five more years,
the famine in Canaan is only going to grow more severe. Joseph’s main concern is
for his aged father, who has already mourned the loss of his son for twenty
years, and who, no doubt, is waiting anxiously for the brothers’ return. “Hurry
and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made
me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall live in the land
of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s
children.’”
The words keep pouring from Joseph’s lips, because
he can see his brothers are having difficulty believing their long-lost brother
is not only still alive but is their friend. He is not a powerful man who will
take revenge long overdue, but a loving brother who wants only to reconcile.
Joseph speaks directly to them in their own language, they hear him with their
own ears and see him with their own eyes.
Then Joseph lets his arms do the talking. He
embraces each of his brothers warmly, until finally the brothers find their
voices and speak to him. Tears flow freely, and built-up tensions flow out of
them. Up until this time, the brothers have remained silent. Most likely fear
and shock have taken their tongue. Or perhaps, they were wondering who is going
to tell Dad, and how they might spin it so it did not lay blame at their feet. Finally,
the brothers begin to speak to him.
Perhaps you know how those brothers felt. Tucked
away in the deep recesses of your being is that dirty little secret that you’ve
been carrying around for years. At times you forget it’s there. Then a certain
person’s name will come up, or you’ll see something that triggers the memory.
Then you’ll feel your secret reach out with two long-nailed fingers and pinch
your soul, just to remind you it’s still there.
On other days, your secret seems to have bonded
with the beat of your heart, so that like Poe’s villain in the Tell-Tale Heart,
the raging pulse of your secret seems obvious to everyone around you. Moreover,
it can form a film around your eyes, so that everything is filtered and
interpreted through it. When something bad happens, you assume it’s due to your
secret. You tell others it’s bad karma or bad luck, but you suspect it’s not.
It’s the ghost of your secret, coming back to haunt you, to demand resolution
and restitution.
Here’s something for you to ponder. In fact, I
suspect you already know this, but let me say it out loud to confirm
it: the secret about secrets is that they don’t exist. There is no such thing in all the world as a secret. You
see, a secret is no longer a secret when two people know it. And even if you
have been so careful as to hide it from the public, from your closest friends,
even from your spouse, there is One who knows. He searches the hearts and minds
of humanity. He brings out of the darkness what we have hidden: He places our
secret sins in the light of His presence (Psalm 90:8). God knows your secret,
and because you know that He knows, you ought to just go ahead and admit the
fact that you have no secrets. (Chad Bird)
What you do have is something that humanity has
always struggled with ever since the fall: a guilty conscience.
Maybe you can relate more readily with Joseph.
You’ve felt firsthand the betrayal of someone close to you. Maybe you’ve even asked
the question, “Why did this terrible thing happen to me?” Theologians calls
this the problem of evil. How can a good, loving, all-powerful God let horrible
things happen?
I’m going to be honest and say right now that
there is no truly satisfactory answer to that question this side of heaven. We
go on as Christians, not because we fully understand God and His ways, but because
we see His true heart in Jesus our Savior. In spite of evil, we know God is
good—because we see Jesus. We know He loves us—because Jesus died and rose for
us. We continue to walk, even through darkness, because of Jesus. There is no
other answer.
But there is another question, a perhaps more
pertinent question, and that question might be phrased this way: “What can God
do with this evil? What new, good thing can God create using this terrible
thing?”
By faith, Joseph came to the conclusion God is
able to bring good out of evil. Yes, he had suffered. He’d been falsely accused
and thrown into prison. Because long ago, Joseph’s brothers had sold him as a
slave into Egypt, he was now in a position to offer help others in a big way. That
doesn’t make what Joseph’s brothers did to him any less evil. Kidnapping is
kidnapping; selling your brother as a slave will never be on the list of good,
moral examples to imitate. But God used that great evil to bring about
salvation for many people.
A guilty conscience, the brokenness of abuse
and the bitterness of betrayal. Both can lead to fractured relationships and
trust issues. Both can lead you away from God. Fortunately, the remedy for both
maladies is found in the same place—the cross and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The
Gospel is for those plagued with guilty consciences and those who have suffered
abuse at the hands of others.
The Gospel in this story is the clear example
it provides of the providence of God. Our God oversees all things—even evil
things contrary to His will—to ensure that they serve His will and saving
purposes. Three times in this text Joseph makes this point: “God sent me before
you to preserve life” (v 5); “God sent me before you to preserve a remnant on
earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors” (v 7); and “So it was not you
who sent me here, but God” (v 8).
The theology is obvious: God is in control—so
much so, that He can even use evil to accomplish His purposes. And what is
God’s purpose in this case? “To preserve a remnant on earth, and to keep alive
for you many survivors.” In using terms like remnant and survivors, Joseph is
employing words that elsewhere in the Old Testament are freighted with
theological significance. It may well be that in the deliverance of his
brothers and his father, Joseph perceives that far more is at stake than the
physical survival of twelve human beings and their children. What survives is God’s
plan of redemption through a remnant of His chosen people.
The remnant motif begins early in Genesis with
Noah and his family and carries through all of Scripture. Despite the threats
of their enemies, the failings of their own sinful flesh, Yahweh, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob preserves a remnant of His people to complete His
promise of the Messiah. Joseph is called upon to play an integral role in the
preservation of this remnant, which includes his brothers and their children. From
these few people eventually comes the whole nation of Israel—and from Israel,
our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Joseph is a type of Christ, one who foreshadows
the person and work of our Savior in his own person and work. There are a
number of parallels between the two. Both are sent to Egypt against their will:
Joseph’s brothers being responsible for his exile there, Herod being
responsible for Jesus’ flight there. Joseph is sold into slavery and Christ is
delivered to the executioners, Joseph for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis
37:28) and Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15), yet in both cases
good comes out of evil: the deliverance of Joseph’s family in the first
instance, the salvation of the world in the second.
As Joseph forgives his brothers, so Christ
cries out from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they
do.” And both Joseph and Christ, though rejected by their brothers, become the
head of the corner of their respective spheres, but still are not ashamed to
call their brothers brethren (Hebrews 2:11).
Joseph’s brothers deserved death, but what they
received was forgiveness and life—and the life of others. Though their motives
and actions were indeed evil, God used it for good. For the saving of the lives
of many people, but even more important, the salvation of the world unto
eternal life.
God can bring good out of our own evils as
well. We may not see how He can do this right now; we may never see it in this
world. And that’s hard. But in the end, it’s okay—because we know God’s true
heart toward us as we see it in the life, death, and resurrection of our dear
Lord Jesus. There on the cross, we see the greatest injustice, the greatest
evil done toward the only one whom is truly good, and God turns it into the
greatest good ever—the salvation of the world.
Your inheritance as a child of Adam is sin and
death, but in Christ you are made alive through His resurrection from the dead
(1 Cor. 15:21–22). As you have died with Him in Holy Baptism, so are you raised
with Him to newness of life. Instead of serving your desires and harming your
neighbors, you live as “sons of the Most High.” You are “merciful, even as your
Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35–36). You deal with others as you would have them
deal with you (Luke 6:37–38).
As Christ loved you when you were at enmity
with Him, as He blessed and prayed for those who abused Him, and as He did good
to those who hated Him and hurt Him, so also you “love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you” (Luke 6:27–29, 35). For God sent His Son to bear the cross
and suffer death, not to condemn the guilty, but “to preserve life.” So does He
provide a place for you within His Church, where He is near and deals kindly
with “you and your children and your children’s children” (Gen. 45:5–10),
giving you forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life. Indeed, for Jesus’ sake,
you are forgiven for all of your sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English
Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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