Lord-willing, I will be able to write on this blog regularly. It's been an interesting vacation, especially since I was able to hear in its entirety the "Prosperity Gospel". I will touch on this when I get to Malachi 10, one of the most commonly used defenses for it. But right now I want to focus on Genesis 45, when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers as Jacob's son.
It's easy to draw the parallel between Joseph and Jesus. So it's only appropriate to draw a parallel between the revelation of Joseph's identity to his brothers with Jesus' identity to us:
How do we recognize Jesus? We don't, until He Himself reveals His identity to us. If you look at the Gospels, Jesus's role as the Messiah was pronounced first by John the Baptist. However most people never made the connection until Jesus himself made the claim that He was God. In the same way Joseph's identity was never revealed until he reveals himself to his brothers. And even then they didn't believe him on the spot. It speaks to 2 things: The hearts of men and the sovereignty of God. The former being a stubborn inclination to acknowledge truth when it is proclaimed, only accepting it when it is witnessed. And the latter being God's control and sovereignty over all of creation.
God's sovereignty is most demonstrated through our bad intentions. You can draw a second parallel with Genesis 50:20, where God used what we intended for evil God used for good. Joseph's brothers intended to remove Joseph from his position of influence over them as Jacob's favorite son, and God used that to save the land from famine. In the same way, our sins, in its attempt to destroy the only thing that was pure and holy in this world, God used for the salvation of mankind. God's sovereignty is most highly displayed in our disobedience, in our malice, and in our sin. It is easy to say "glory to God" when good things happen out of our actions. But to proclaim that while we are sinful, God is all the more glorified, that speaks more to His power over all things of this world.
The last parallel you can draw is the joy that comes from realizing God's sovereignty. The fact that God used it for good should give us hope, even in a world as fallen as ours. In the passage, Jacob's joy moves him to want to go to Egypt, to travel to a distant land at his age, just to see his son who he thought was dead. And isn't that the joy we should be experiencing on Easter Sunday when we celebrate Jesus' resurrection from the dead. In both cases the good that comes out destroys any evil that we had intended originally.
The problem that I think, most Christians deal with is seeing God working through the worst of situations and thinking "God, how can any good possibly come out of this". We have relatives dying, natural disasters killing hundreds, corrupt politicians destroying the economy, people losing jobs, and how can a God, a sovereign God, possibly pull any good out of that? Let's just look at the cross. An instrument of death and torture meant to suffocate a criminal, while publicly humiliating them. A weapon of fear and death that had the ability to suppress any rebellion, kill any desire to stand up against the Roman empire. The same weapon that will be the symbol of oppression, racism, and intolerance, sometimes even used for satanic worship. And for God to turn that same weapon of death into the instrument for man's salvation. If God is sovereign in Calvary, there is no where else He cannot reign and have control over.
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