The Promise Goes South

God had promised to bless Abraham and through Abraham the entire world. This promise outlived Abraham because he had a son, Isaac. The promise was continued when Isaac had two sons Esau and Jacob. While it was assumed that the promise would be continued through the eldest son Esau we discovered that God had something else in mind as it was Jacob who obtained the blessing and the promise.

The story then becomes a bit more complicated when Jacob has 12 sons and those twelve sons act like, well twelve brothers, filled with competition, jealousy and spite. By their actions they manage to alienate all the other peoples living near them and to even sell one of their brothers, Joseph, into slavery. This hardly seems likes a group of people God would use to help bless the entire world.

What we will discover however is that God is able to work in and through circumstances that would appear to preclude any sense of grace or promise. And we will see that the continuation of the promise often turns on moments which at the time, would appear to be filled with more evil than good.

We see this played out in the story of Joseph, the brother sold into slavery. He is sold into slavery because his brothers are jealous of him. They are jealous because Joseph claims to have dreams from God which can tell the future. This might not be so bad except that the future predicted in the dreams is one in which all the older brothers serve the younger brother, namely Joseph. This so angers the older brothers that at first they plan to kill Joseph (making it look like an accident) but later decide slavery is the better option.

Joseph is taken into slavery in Egypt where he works for a wealthy man. The man's wife takes a shining to Joseph and invites him into her bed (and you thought the Bible was boring). He refuses, she lies about him and Joseph ends up in prison. While in prison he interprets some dreams which eventually gets him out of prison and working for the Pharaoh. In the meantime there is a famine in the area in which Jacob and his family are still living. Upon hearing that there is food in Egypt some of the brothers travel there and guess who they meet, though they do not realize it…yes that's right…they meet Joseph.

Joseph takes his time reveling his true identity, but ultimately he lets them know who he is, invites the family to live with him in Egypt and thus saves the family (and the promise). The promise is thereby saved by the evil intentions of the brothers. Where this leads us is to one of the more intriguing lines in the entire Bible when Joseph tells his brothers, "You meant it (his being sold into slavery) for evil, but God meant it for good." (You can read this story in its entirety in Genesis 37 – 47)

Hopefully this story will remind us that God is able to turn even the most despicable of actions into paths to the good. We are called then to see that those moments in our lives and in the life of the church when we believe all is lost, are moments when we should never count God out. For it may be that God is indeed working to turn the world's evil into God's own good in order that the promise continue to live and humanity and creation be restored.