The brothers know that Joseph loved his father but did that
mean that he was biding his time for revenge against them until Jacob no longer
lived? They concoct a lie based on that
love, that Jacob had desired that Joseph forgive his brothers for the evil they
had done him. In the lie is also a confession and a request for forgiveness and
once again fulfillment of the dream as they bow before him and state, “We are
your servants.” Joseph repeats the words
concerning God’s will for saving lives being done through their sin against him
to reassure them that he meant that before, it wasn’t just nice talk while
their father lived. On Joseph’s death he
extracts a promise from his descendants that they will take his bones with him
when the Lord brings them back to the land, a faith-filled ending to the book
of beginnings.
The leaven of the Pharisees is the problem, it is the leaven
of self-righteousness, the leaven that spreads through even Christianity to
this day. It is the leaven that teaches anything
other than grace as the answer to the question of eternal salvation. It is the leaven that destroys souls and
makes us into judgmental, self-righteous prigs.
How could they continue to ask for a sign when He had given them many
signs? Pharisaism causes spiritual
blindness, a blindness to the work of God around you because you are so
concerned about your own works and the sins of others that you can no longer
see anything good in anyone else. It teaches
us to focus on the wrong things. The
disciples have succumbed to this leaven when they suddenly think that Jesus is
somehow speaking of bread just after the feeding miracle. The only solution to the problem is for Jesus
to heal our eyes, restore our sight that we might see clearly that it is all
about grace, and God is working all around us.
Spiritual blindness is harder to cure than physical blindness.
I heard a woman once remark to someone else who had never
heard someone speak or pray in tongues, “I am sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t
have the Spirit.” There is a charismatic
Pharisaism that exists in the church today with respect to this one gift and
yet such an idea certainly doesn’t harmonize with Paul’s understanding of the
gifts here. Paul says we are to value
the gifts of all people in the body of Christ as all who confess Jesus as Lord
have the Holy Spirit. What an
impoverished church we would be if we rejected everyone who didn’t have the
gift of tongues but did have these other gifts.
Paul encourages the Corinthian church to celebrate and elevate all the
gifts which is to say all the people of God in their endless variety, that the
body may be built up in love. We need to
have eyes like Joseph, open to God’s work in all things, he understood Romans
8.28 long before Paul wrote it.
Let us love and sing
and wonder,
Let us praise the Savior’s Name!
He has hushed the law’s loud thunder,
He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame.
He has washed us with His blood,
He has brought us nigh to God.
Let us praise the Savior’s Name!
He has hushed the law’s loud thunder,
He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame.
He has washed us with His blood,
He has brought us nigh to God.
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