GENESIS SERMON
SERIES
God Sends Us Ahead
Genesis 45: 1-15
Pastor
This is it. The moment you’ve
been waiting for. The moment when all the people who thought you’d never amount
to anything watch you come out on the stage. The spotlight hits you, the
audience stands and the entire hall reverberates with their applause. This is
that moment when a man dressed in the finery of the Egyptian court makes
himself known to his impoverished brothers: “It’s me, Joseph! It’s me! Remember
me? The brother you threw into a pit? Don’t you remember me, Judah? You
suggested that you could get some money by selling me into slavery.”
At first sight the brothers cannot take it in.
They do not remember. Twenty years has made a great difference between the men.
Joseph is no longer the annoying baby brother. He has been a slave working in an
Egyptian household. He has spent years in a prison. He no longer has the soft,
pampered, playful look of the spoiled teenage boy from Canaan. In addition,
Joseph now has the dress and demeanor of a high counselor to the Pharaoh. In
such a position he rightfully keeps his distance from those who stand in his
audience. And the brothers have changed also. They first came to the house of
the governor to ask for grain. They had returned because Judah had come to
offer himself as a slave in the hope of saving his family. It was Judah who
once said, “What profit is it if we slay our brother ... Come, let us sell him
to the Midianites” (Genesis 37:26-27). How strange the wheel turns that Judah
now offers to give himself as a slave.
As Joseph stands before his brothers, he has
them right where we’d love to have all those petty gossipers who have told
tales on us. All those who take great joy in criticizing us behind our backs.
Joseph has his brothers right where the psalmist would like to put all his
malicious witnesses: “At my stumbling they gathered in glee ... slandered me without
ceasing ... Let them be put to shame and confusion altogether who rejoice at my
calamity!” (Psalm 35:15, 26).
My friend from high school days had a good sales
position, making almost $70,000 a year. But then the business ran into hard
times. Stress mounted and relations between sales representatives and
management broke down. When his division closed down, those who remained with
the franchise refused to give my friend a helpful reference. He was unemployed
for two-and-a-half years and never found a decent job in his profession. He was
bitter. He told me he wanted to bring down those executives who still had cushy
jobs but had sent him out without even as much as a good word.
There are some events in our life that make us
cringe when we remember them. And there are some people we would love to have
at our mercy, as Joseph has his brothers at his mercy. But what does he do at this
juncture? He sends all of the Egyptians, all of the witnesses, out of the room.
When they are gone, he starts bawling, not crying but bawling. His bawling is
so loud they hear his weeping throughout the house and even next door! But his
brothers still don’t know who he is. Wouldn’t you love to know what’s going
through the brothers’ minds when this Egyptian starts to break down and cry?
Finally, slowly, Joseph regains his composure. He then invites them to come
closer, to cross that understood boundary between peasant and ruler. And after
exposing his emotions, he says it: “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold
into Egypt” (Genesis 45:4). I think the terror and astonishment these brothers
experienced would have been similar to the awesome shock the early church
experienced in the presence of the risen Christ.
With this kind of impact Joseph has his brothers
right where he could humiliate them. Right there where he could even the score
for the pain and hardship he has endured. But instead Joseph comes to his
senses. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Joseph realizes that everything
his brothers did, every miserable thing that happened to him was twisted by God
into something good. Because of his past, God had placed Joseph in a position
that enables him to save a new nation from the ruin of famine. The brothers’
actions were God sending him on ahead of them to ensure their future.
Joseph was unable, even with all the power in
Egypt, to do anything to change the past. But now he can see that God has been
at work redeeming those years. Perhaps Joseph bawls because he is finally
released from his captivity of sadness and frustration, and now his brothers are
finally freed from their guilt. Joseph basically took a big eraser and wiped
off the names of all the people he had blamed for his misfortune. Then in the
cleared space he wrote in “Praise only one name, GOD.”
It was not in a vacuum that Jacob
favored Joseph. It wasn’t an isolated event that Judah and his brothers sold
him into slavery, or that Potiphar’s wife sent him off to prison. God chose
him. God was at work while he was enslaved. God was at work while he was imprisoned.
And so to God the praise is given! For it was also God who taught him the way
with dreams and God who selected him as counselor to the Pharaoh. Terence
Fretheim writes:
God has “taken over” what they have done and uses it to bring
about this end. Their actions become God’s actions by being woven into God’s
life-giving purposes. Even more, Pharaoh’s actions -- elevating Joseph as ruler
-- has become God’s
actions!
We also are unable to change many of the
lousy things that happen to us in our lives at the hands of others, but we can
allow God to “take them over,” to redeem them. All the terrible comments and
relationships and events can become God’s life-giving purposes. If these
incidents have matured us in Christ, if they have made us empathetic and able
to help others out of their lethargy, hurt, or bitterness, then our past is
redeemed. We have been sent ahead.
Joseph tells his brothers to come closer. He
realizes that he holds no power over them. Just as he realizes his brothers
never held any power over him.
My friend who was slighted a good
reference now works at the community college in the city where he lives. He is
out of the cutthroat profession he left and is making use of not only his life
experience but also his math background in his new vocation. I know he is good
at what he does. And it took all the pressure, rejection, and waiting to get
him where he is.
Even if we live through rejection, or unemployment,
or slavery, or imprisonment, or chemotherapy, or whatever, we can claim our
life with confidence. Paul’s words to the Romans are certainly true: “We know
that God works for the good in all things.” (Romans 8:28) And God sends us
on ahead.