Genesis 45:1-46:4

The strategy of God is to bring salvation through a reconciled remnant.

Having recently a flight, I have been pondering the pattern of the process of air travel. Waiting with anticipation for boarding, finding your seat, hearing the rules (safety procedures, exits etc.). Then the voice of the pilot with a word of intention, flying to this place, fast and safe, smooth as well.

You take off, wait for the ding that indicates you are above 10,000 feet and have freedom to use approved devices. Then arriving at cruising altitude as the in-flight service begins for your soda and pretzels. Maybe along the way there is some “rough air,” since we don’t call it turbulence anymore!

And then depending on the length of the flight you can count the minutes or hours until you notice descent, and the ding indicating half an hour from landing. The sound of landing gear extending, and finally touching down.

In this reflection, I’ve come to realize that studying a book of the Bible, especially a narrative text like Genesis, can have a similar pattern.

Take off is full of acceleration, we’ve had the rules, the characters, the voice of the pilot, and we get a sense of the direction of the journey, toward an offspring (serpent crusher, great nation, family to bless the whole earth). Covers miles at speed - plenty of rough air along the way - starts to be turns, dives, ascents, that you wonder if they are on purpose…

Hopeful you can get a second bag of pretzels!

As the journey goes on the themes take on brilliant clarity, and there begin to be signs tha the metaphorical plane is landing soon.

We have covered a lot of ground in our study of Genesis and through the landing of the plane, we gain more insight into the pilot’s flight path, His strategy all along.

Here in Joseph’s reunion with his brothers and father we can recognize and rejoice that:

The strategy of God is to bring salvation through a reconciled remnant.

Now, we have zipped ahead in the story. Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, God warning of coming famine, after 7 years of abundance. Joseph is put in charge of storing a portion of these years to save Egypt through the famine, and the plan works. More than that, it saves the world.

In the midst of these years, Moses, as the author of Genesis, tells of how Joseph’s brothers go to Egypt to buy grain. Their father, Jacob, heard Egypt had grain to sell, as there was famine everywhere, so he sends all of his sons but Benjamin.

They go before Joseph, don’t recognize him. Remember, they sold him into slavery and told their father he was dead. He is harsh with them, gives them grain but sends most back to bring their youngest brother to prove they are not spies.

High drama. Jacob doesn’t want to lose this son as well.

Famine is too severe so eventually Benjamin goes. Joseph is overjoyed. They feast. Then he fills their bags but puts his silver chalice in Benjamin’s sack. He is “caught” as if he has stolen it. And Judah offers himself in palace of his brother, inciting Joseph to lose control of his emotions, and he tells the truth.

And in the telling, he shows God’s cards.

This was God’s plan, his purpose is being carried out.

Genesis 45:5–8 “And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. [6] For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. [7] And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. [8] So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.” (ESV)

This is a gospel story - foundational to our faith. Reconciliation, through a remnant.

Reconciliation

A term indicating the changed relationship for the better between persons of groups who were formerly at enmity with each other.

We have already seen significant reconciliation. Esau and Jacob, the older brother once wanting to kill his coniving brother, reunited and at peace.

Now it is Jacob’s children.

God can redeem painful situations and use them for good, offering hope to those who feel trapped in their circumstances.

As readers we are waiting on the covenant promise, back to Abraham, this vast family, blessing the world. Maybe we’ve began to wonder, is it only Joseph?

The famine, his role, is that enough? Or is he just part of the story?

The brothers believe their greatest need is food, but their greatest need here, that will not only provide grain, but a place of provision and flourishing, is reconciliation with Joseph.

I wonder if Joseph had sent an emissary to Canaan inviting them to him, how would they have responded?

They already see the pickle they are in as judgment which is what elicits Joseph’s emotional respone.

God seems to know this is the way it has to happen for them to reconcile, they might not choose it on their own, they need another to intervene on their behalf, as Joseph does.

“Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here,, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”

Mercy and grace given to these brothers bringing reconciliation to the family, all together. Their father will be numb at the news!

Joseph’s willingness to reconcile reveals his trust and confidence in God’s plan and purpose for his life. His life plays into the larger covenant promise. It is God’s strategy.

“Joseph does not see the face of God, not in a dream that affirms God’s care of him, nor in an angelic intervention in his time of sorrow and peril, nor in his embrace of his alienated brothers. What he sees instead is the working of divine intention.” — Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson

“It is evident that Joseph had spent the last two decades perpetually praying, thinking, and rethinking what had been going on — and that God had given him wisdom. Just as Joseph had been given insight about the divine plan in the dreams of Pharaoh, he knew the divine plan in the affairs of his brothers. 2 So now Joseph stripped away the superficial surface of human activity to reveal the hand of God. Most revealing were his four references to God: “God sent me before you to preserve life” (v. 5b); “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant” (v. 7a); “So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (v. 8a); and, “God has made me lord of all Egypt” (v. 9b).” Hughes

Noticing the divine intention Joseph extends grace, lavishing resource on his brothers. Manipulating Pharaoh to gain the choicest of land.

When he has every right to get even. To make them starve. To take revenge. He relents and restores the breach.

Our hearts long for this type of restoration - something deep inside of us pangs after it - so we love to see it.

Some of us were golfing yesterday…

Happy Gilmore… in the first movie his nemesis is Shooter McGavin. But in the sequel, there is reconciliation, and in the reconciliation comes salvation…

Gives us a picture of what all of humanity needs, from the garden there is an ongoing need of reconciliation with God. Humanity’s condition apart from him is incapable of accomplishing what is necessary, ungodly, and sinful. We try to find a fix in all sorts of things, but only God can repair what we have broken.

We are starving, looking for grain, and really in need of reconciliation.

Joseph's story prefigures Christ as the ultimate figure who was betrayed by his own, yet through His suffering, provides salvation for many. Just as Joseph forgave and reconciled with his brothers, Christ offers forgiveness and reconciliation to all who come to Him, transforming betrayal into blessing.

This is God’s strategy all along. While we were most in need, he gives of himself in an act of mercy and grace, and reconciles us to himself.

Colossians 1:19–22 “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, [20] and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

[21] And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, [22] he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,” (ESV)

Reconciliation in Christ is salvation for us, it is life, it is our joy.

Romans 5:10–11 “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. [11] More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (ESV)

And reconciliation becomes our mission in Christ!

2 Corinthians 5:17–20 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. [18] All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; [19] that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. [20] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (ESV)

Only God can bear and remove the consequence of human sin and separation and he does this in Jesus, by his cross.

When we come awake to this the immediate effect is peace with God, but its more that just about the individual, the world is affected by Christ’s redemptive work. And this salvation unleashes us to seek reconciliation, to restore relationships wherever we can, with the hope of the gospel.

Joseph points to this, one saving many through reconciliation.

There is more here. What is saved is a remnant.

Remnant

Covenant carries on, through a remnant.

Genesis 45:7 “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.” (ESV)

In Genesis, Yahweh is always using the unlikely. The old and barren are given promise and a child. The second born is given the blessing. The young and despised holds the future of a family in his hands.

“God is not just proving his control of events but keeping his promise to the patriarchs that they should have a multitude of descendants, or as Joseph puts it, ‘a great number of survivors.’” Wenham

70 will come to Egypt and become a great nation. The promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will carry on.

God is using Joseph to make it happen, but also Pharaoh, these sinful brothers, the generation after them.

Genesis 46:2–4 “And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” [3] Then he said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. [4] I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.” (ESV)

“Reading the Joseph narrative against the backdrop of the promise to Abraham that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:3) clarifies for us the divine purpose in Joseph’s shrewd administrative leadership: namely, fulfillment of this promise. Through Joseph the people were greatly blessed, as God had promised Abraham would be true of his descendants. Indeed, it is striking to note the concluding statement of 47:27 that Joseph’s family, having settled in Egypt, “were fruitful and multiplied greatly.” This goes back not merely to Genesis 12 but to Genesis 1: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (1:28). It is the mandate given to Adam and Eve. Through Joseph, God is recovering and restoring the original charge given to humanity.”

Covenant continued. This puts the coming 400 years of silence in context, the coming slavery, the exodus.

“And I will also bring you up again.”

God could go big, there will be moments he does. But his regular strategy is reliance on a remnant. “Small, remaining quantity.”

The unlikely. It is still how he works, his church as a remnant in the world. With a message that seems unlikely but actually brings life, hope, and freedom.

1 Corinthians 1:18–31 “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. [19] For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

[20] Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? [21] For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. [22] For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, [23] but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, [24] but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. [25] For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

[26] For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. [27] But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; [28] God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, [29] so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. [30] And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, [31] so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (ESV)

Still confounding, still setting free. Still using a remnant for his glory. To spread the message of reconciliation, inviting others in. It’s been His plan all along.

The strategy of God is to bring salvation through a reconciled remnant.

Be reconciled to God - Through the blood of Jesus, believe in him, his life, death, and resurrection were for your reconciliation, that you could stand before the One true God blameless, with joy. Stand firm in your reconciliation, because he secured it for you, you are secure as Jesus is. Live from this foundation!

Be Ambassadors of reconciliation - Invite by imitation. Live like Joseph, like Jesus. Repair the breach. Heal the wounds, forgive as you have been forgiven, reconcile with such grace that they take notice, showing the world what it means to be reconciled to God.

The landing gear is down, we are so close, but we will remain on a journey, all of life is before us. Many more miles to travel together inviting other sojourners to join this remnant. May the Lord continue His strategy among us, may He surprise the world with reconciliation.

And as we go, “do not quarrel on the way.”