Family Feud

       A girl came home from her first day in the second grade and announced: “I’m the prettiest girl in the whole class.”  Her father asked, “Did somebody tell you that?”  “They didn’t have to” she replied. “I could see for myself.”

       That girl sounds a lot like Joseph, the son of Jacob.  When we first meet Joseph he sounds like a very unpleasant young man.

       As writer Frederick Buechner describes his adolescent personality: “Joseph’s half-brothers tried to murder him by throwing him into a pit, but if they had ever been brought to trial, they wouldn’t have needed Clarence Darrow to get them an acquittal in any court in the land. Not only did Joseph have offensive dreams in which he was Mr. Big and they were all groveling at his feet but he recounted them in sickening detail at the breakfast table the next morning.  He owned a colored coat he flaunted while they ran around in t-shirts and dirty jeans.”  He was also a snitch.

       They stuck him in a pit to die but change their minds and sold him to a group of Midianites on their way to Egypt .  The brothers went home with the bloodied up coat and told Jacob that Joseph had had a very fatal encounter with a lion.  Joseph meanwhile was taken to Egypt and sold to a rich man named Potipher – a high official and a captain of Pharaoh’s guard.

       Through a series of God-directed events, Joseph is freed from slavery.  Not only is he freed but he rises very high.  In fact, the Bible says that Joseph becomes the number two man in Egypt – second only to Pharaoh himself.

       Joseph’s responsibility is to prepare Egypt for an approaching famine.  For seven years the harvest is abundant and Joseph gathers grain to be stored against the ravages of the lean years.  Thanks to Joseph , Egypt has plenty of food when the famine arrives.

       Word of Egypt’s bounty reaches beyond the land of the Nile to Palestine where Jacob and his family are feeling the pinch.  Jacob sends Joseph’s ten older brothers to Egypt with money to buy some badly needed grain.  He keeps only Benjamin, his beloved wife Rachel’s one surviving son.

       The brothers do not recognize Joseph in the high government official to whom they make their request.  Joseph looks like an Egyptian. He has a  beard, a funny hat, and walks like an Egyptian.  But Joseph recognizes them.  Joseph decides to put them under pressure to see if they’ve changed – whether under pressure they will abandon Benjamin as they had once betrayed him.  He gives them a promise of grain – but only if they come back to him bringing their younger brother Benjamin in tow.

       At first Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go.  Even after all these years, he is still mourning the death of Joseph.  But finally, the famine becomes so severe that he is forced to yield.

       Joseph shows his brothers great favor.  He allows them to set out with bulging sacks of grain – but only after he hides his own golden cup in the bottom of Benjamin’s sack.

       The missing cup, as planned, is discovered by a border guard.  “Benjamin must be punished!” Joseph declares.  But the older brothers refuse to abandon him.  One of them, Judah, even offers to be punished in Benjamin’s place.

       This is enough proof for Joseph.  He reveals his true identity to his astonished brothers.  They naturally fear for their lives.  But Joseph assures them that he means them no harm. He sends them to bring Jacob and their families and possessions to Egypt and promises them rich land where they will prosper.

        But despite all of Joseph’s gracious words and generous acts, his brothers cannot believe that he has really forgiven them.  So when Jacob dies they come and grovel before Joseph with what they claim is Jacob’s dying request – that Joseph will finally and completely forgive his brothers.

       Now, Joseph, who as a teenager had boasted that one day his brothers would bow down to him and do him homage, breaks down and weeps when his dream comes true – not now in pride but in humility.  His answer rings out like a bell: “Don’t be scared.  Of course you’re pardoned.  Do you think I’m God to grovel before me like this?”

       Now in the old days, of course, as Frederick Buechner points out, “God was just who he suspected he was, and the dreams where they groveled were his all-time favorites.  For this story is not only the story of how Israel was saved from famine.  It is also the story of how Joseph was saved as a human being.”

       Now Joseph does not condone what his brothers did.  “You meant it for evil” he tells them.  Evil is what they intended and evil is what they did.  “But God turned the evil for good.”

       Joseph would agree whole heartedly with the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:28 where Paul writes that “God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  We looked at these verses before Easter in our sermon and small group series on knowing and doing the will of God.

       Neither Joseph nor Paul ever claim that everything is good.  Some things obviously are not good at all.  But the promise is that things that are evil, God can use for good, and that all things work together for good to those who love God.

       An illustration from the kitchen might help us understand what Paul means by all things working together or good – even the things that aren’t good in themselves.

       You make a chocolate cake from scratch.  The butter is good.  The sugar is good.  The cream is good. But the salt is not good taken alone.  It’s offensive and overpowering. The soda isn’t good by itself either.  Even the cooking chocolate is not good in its natural state – as I learned as a kid when I raided my mother’s supply.  But just try to bake a chocolate cake without the salt, the soda and the chocolate.  They are not good by themselves but they interact together with the other ingredients to produce good – and a good that is greater than the sum of all the individual ingredients.

       The story of Joseph and the words of Paul reveal a vital principle of God’s action in our lives and in our world – what the world means for evil God means for good – means, in fact, for salvation!  God is big enough to encompass all human and superhuman evil and still work out His Holy will!

       God is big enough to encompass even the supreme evil of the cross.  Remember it wasn’t the human worst that crucified Jesus.  It was the human best – the best religious system, Judaism, and the best justice system, the Roman, worked hand-in-hand to produce the cross.  God took all of this and triumphed over it as Easter.  In the words of Peter on the day of Pentecost: “You denied the holy and righteous one, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead.”

       It is not even two months after Easter. 

       What does Easter still mean to you today?   Jesus is alive and He gives us the assurance of our own resurrection through His triumph over our sin and our death.

      This morning I want to leave you with one message – that our God is too powerful to be frustrated by an evil or combination of evils.  This is true with Joseph and his brothers.  It is true at the cross.  It is true in our world today.  God’s power is not just real in the there and then.  It is true in the here and now of our lives. As John reminds us in his first letter “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

      (hold up newspaper) Which of these things we read about in this newspaper is too big for the God who raised Jesus Christ from death?  What problem in your own life is too big when you have that same power of God in your life?

       Jesus has given us new life!  We participate in His victory.  Let us live in courage and faith because Christ is risen and He has made us his own.  And in that confidence, let us come now to His table where He has promised to meet us.