Quick Bullets on the Joseph Story
I’m preaching at an All-City Thanksgiving Service being held at First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa TONIGHT (11/21) at 7 PM. My topic:
“How to Give Thanks While Holding Your Nose and Humming”
Come on out!
Note: Our Genesis readings are drawing to an end, and though I’m sad—I love Genesis so much!—I’m also looking forward to Advent, which begins on 11/27. Our Advent reading plan begins next Monday, 11/28. The Advent reading guides are beautiful; if you live in Tulsa, pick one up at Asbury Church this weekend. If you live in Dallas, email Sandie and she’ll tell you how to pick one up. If you live out of town and NOT in Dallas, email Sandie and she’ll mail you one this week.
Genesis 49:1-27
Then Jacob called his sons and said, “Gather yourselves together,that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come. “Assemble and listen, O sons of Jacob, listen to Israel your father.
3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power.
4 Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence,because you went up to your father's bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch!
5 “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords.
6 Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.
7 Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.
8 “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's sons shall bow down before you.
9Judah is a lion's cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?
10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
11 Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.
13 “Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea; he shall become a haven for ships, and his border shall be at Sidon.
14 “Issachar is a strong donkey, crouching between the sheepfolds.
15 He saw that a resting place was good, and that the land was pleasant, so he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant at forced labor.
16 “Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel.
17 Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse's heels so that his rider falls backward.
18 I wait for your salvation, O Lord.
19 “Raiders shall raid Gad, but he shall raid at their heels.
20 “Asher's food shall be rich, and he shall yield royal delicacies.
21 “Naphtali is a doe let loose that bears beautiful fawns.
22 “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall.
23 The archers bitterly attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him severely,
24 yet his bow remained unmoved; his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (from there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel),
25 by the God of your father who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
26 The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents, up to the bounties of the everlasting hills. May they be on the head of Joseph, and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.
27 “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil.”
QUICK BULLETS ON THE JOSEPH STORY
• I think the Bible wants us to have an ambivalent opinion on Joseph: on the one hand, he is obviously a genius, but on the other hand he becomes totally Egyptianized, which is not good because it means he’s forgotten that he is a child of Israel.
• The Bible makes it clear that the Lord was with Joseph when he was enslaved and imprisoned, but we aren’t told that the Lord is with Joseph when he is raised to power in Egypt. Why? I think it’s because it seems that Joseph forgets the Lord when he is delivered from prison and raised to power. As I mentioned above, he becomes so totally acculturated in Egypt that he doesn’t even live with his family when they settle in Goshen!
• Hundreds and hundreds of years later, Daniel is an Israelite who finds himself serving a foreign king—in this case, the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel, however, never gives up on his Israelite identity, and God still uses him and he still retains his high position.
• I wonder if Joseph’s problem was thinking that there is no way he could have kept his high position apart from turning his back on his heritage. Of course, if the Lord wanted Joseph to be Pharoah’s right hand, then it would have happened. It is almost as if Joseph stops trusting in the Lord at the very moment when things begin to turn around for him.
• All throughout the story of Joseph the central question has been, Who will lead the family after Jacob is gone? Jacob’s final blessings of his sons tell us the answer (though we’ve already figured it out): Judah, the fourth son, will be the leader! Read the blessings carefully and see how Jacob hasn’t missed anything. He remembers, e.g., how Reuben slept with his wife/concubine so many years before, and how Simeon and Levi led the brutal slaughter at Shechem. By the way, Judah is the tribe from which David comes, and later Jesus. Do you know that praise song “Lion and the Lamb”? This is why the songwriter in that song describes the Lord as “the Lion of Judah”.