Choosing not to be a Victim

The story of Joseph is one of the most inspiring stories in the Bible. Joseph’s brothers resented him and hated him. They hated him because he was their father’s favorite. They hated him because he had been given privileges they didn’t think he deserved. They hated him for his dreams of grandeur. No family with this kind of out of control emotions will remain intact. Joseph’s brothers were men carrying highly explosive emotions.

When the transcontinental railroad was being built, they used gun powder to blast their way through the rock to make tunnels for the trains. They tried for a short time to use nitroglycerin, but it was too powerful and too fragile. A spark from a hammer could set off an explosion prematurely taking lives.

These sons of Jacob had no help to deal with these powerful emotions they felt.  Parents who are aware of what is going on in their children and who ask God to help them can find a way to help. All of these dangerous emotions can be managed if we can learn to respect them and talk them out. But, we need someone who cares enough to listen to us and help us sort it all out and diffuse them.

Joseph was attacked by his brothers when he came to check on their welfare. They beat him and stripped him of his unique ornamental coat and threw him in a dry cistern. They ate the fare he brought from his father and refused to listen to his cries for help. Instead of leaving him there to die, they decided to sell him as a slave to a caravan bound for Egypt. What wounds these brothers inflicted on this seventeen-year-old brother! Could he ever forgive them? Yes, incredibly, he did with God’s help.

If anybody ever deserved to be a victim, it was Joseph. He had not done anything to deserve this.  How easy it would have been for him to carry this hurt with him the rest of his life and plan his revenge. However, Joseph never became a victim. The fact that Joseph overcame his hurt and allowed God to help him find his will for his life is amazing.

We all carry wounds, some of which go back to when we were young, and for others, the scars are more recent. Most can name those old wounds like it was yesterday. Victimhood is very popular today, whether it is a victim of poverty, a victim of prejudice, or a victim of bad parenting or a horrible divorce. It is imperative to understand that being a victim is a form of slavery. The hate and resentment are the chains that keep us in the dungeon of dark emotions.

Joseph’s life teaches us that life is full of inequities. But it also shows us that we have a great God who is right in the middle of all that is wrong and if we will trust him, he performs his will, and no one can stop him.

How about turning all your hurt, pain, resentment, and hate all over to God? You may have made some serious mistakes that you can’t get over. You may have no sense of purpose or desire to go on. Maybe you are like Joseph feeling like you are sitting at the bottom of the cistern with even your own family turned away from you. You think you are all alone. If this is you, then turn your life entirely to God. Only God can put the pieces of our broken dreams back together. Only God can make something beautiful of the tragedies of our lives. You are not alone because God loves you!

Overcoming Rejection

Rejection is one of the most difficult human emotions to deal with for all of us. When we are rejected, we experience a whole range of powerful reactions such as anger, resentment, confusion, and self-doubt. Some people never seem to get over rejection, and they never find healing causing them to be victims who carry huge burdens all their lives.

Joseph’s brothers rejected him because he was favored over them by their father. Their father, father, Jacob, should have known that favoritism does no good since his father favored his older brother. Not surprising like a broken record, Jacob favored Joseph because he was the son of Rachel, his late but beloved wife. The lifelong hurt that Jacob carried by his own father’s favoritism should have made him unwilling to show partiality, but it didn’t. Amazing how we pick up dysfunction and carry it with us to the next generation even though we loathe it in others.

The brothers also despised Joseph because he shared his dreams of grandeur. They grew to hate Joseph until they ultimately rejected him. Joseph was only seventeen, but he would have felt the pains of rejection. No doubt, he questioned his self-worth and whether or not God had abandoned him. God did not, however, abandon Joseph, and Joseph did not abandon God. God used this rejection of Joseph to build his dependence on him. He used the rejection to cause Joseph to be persistent—preparing him for future rejection. Learn this, if God is in your life—rejection is not the end—it is only the material God uses to forge his plan.

If you experience rejection on the job, put it in God’s hands. If you experience rejection in a relationship, put it in God’s hands. Joseph’s story is about overcoming rejection through trust in God’s omniscience. God took the sin of the brothers and the mistakes of Jacob and Joseph and used it to fulfill his plans. The story of Joseph’s life tells us that God knows how to untangle the knots in our lives and weave a beautiful tapestry. It reveals that any of us who follow God will live a life that will sometimes become very complicated from our sin, but God will sort it out if we remain faithful. Many years later, Joseph would say to his brothers that God had his hand on his life even in the way he came to Egypt:

But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt” (Genesis 45:7-8)

God will help us in the everyday grind of life. God’s omniscience takes both the good and evil actions of everyone, Joseph’s family, of Pharaoh and his servants, and uses it all to fulfill his plan. After his father died and the brothers worried that Joseph would take revenge, but he assured them:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

Esau’s Legacy

 

Esau was a likable person who was skilled at the art of hunting. He was handsome, rough, and tuff and was admired by men and women. Yet it is clear that Esau was accustomed to giving in to his appetites. He knew nothing of delayed gratification. If he wanted it, he pursued it. He had no spiritual desire and no sense of the eternal; consequently, he could sell his birthright and not regret it.

 Jacob and Esau were as different as night and day. Esau would have been the most likable and the one who would have been the most impressive. Jacob, on the other hand, was deceitful and manipulating. The most significant difference, however, was that Jacob loved God, and Esau did not. They remind me of the parable Jesus told of the two sons: “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.' “'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go” (Matt 21:28-30).  Esau would have been the one who would have made you think he would come through for you, but he would not. Jacob would have been eliminated from the start with his conniving scheming heart, but God would transform him.

 Esau’s selfishness fueled his arrogance and dismissive attitude. God didn’t matter, nor did the divine promise of his grandfather and father they had so long hoped to see. Esau could not see beyond what was in front of him. His life was guided by pleasure and desire for his personal comfort. His choices set him on a tragic course that took him away from God and away from God’s blessings.

 Every generation faces the same challenge. If we live with no eternal view of heaven life will be just what you can see and experience here. It will be what we eat, what we wear, what we do—utterly void of the unseen. Paul put it this way, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18).

 Once when Jesus’ disciples had been caught in a horrific storm, and they feared they would drown, they woke Jesus up who was sleeping in the stern of the boat. They asked, “Master, Master, we're going to drown!” (Luke 8:24). Jesus got up and “…rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm.”

 Then Jesus asked his disciples a penetrating question: “Where is your faith?” (Luke 8:25). The disciples were utterly speechless. Luke gives us their reaction to what just happened, “In fear and amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”

 Where was Esau’s faith? It was non-existent. He was self-reliant and disinterested in the things of God. His legacy is a godless legacy. Jacob was also self-reliant, but when he came to the end of himself, he turned to God. Jacob experienced that same awe of God the disciples did in that boat. His faith was real, and because of that Jacob left a legacy of faith. Jacob gave us Joseph, a man after God.