Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 48-50.

I am going to touch on a few things today.  Perhaps I will try to tie my thoughts on them together, but I do not think that I will succeed.  When Joseph brought his two sons to his father Jacob, Jacob made some statements which demonstrated his trust that God would keep His promises.  As part of his blessings on his grandsons, Joseph’s sons, he gives us a message about how we can keep our faith.  As he began speaking to Joseph and his sons, he repeated the promise which God had made to him, and to his descendants, a promise which God had previously made to Abraham and Isaac.  At the end of his blessings on Joseph’s sons, he told Joseph the following, “I am about to die, but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers.”  The translators’ notes tell us that the “you” and “yours” in that quote were plural in Hebrew, which means that Jacob was talking about Joseph and his brothers (and their descendants).  In the middle of this discussion, Jacob says something which is a message for Joseph about why he should trust God’s promises.  Jacob tells Joseph, “I never expected to see your face again, and now God has allowed me to see your children too.”  When he says that Jacob is giving an example of where God had previously done a good for him that God had not even promised, so Joseph can have faith that God will do that which He had promised to Jacob.  When we struggle with our faith, we should remind ourselves about all of the good which God has already done for us.  Actually, we should regularly remind ourselves of the good which God has done for us.  As we do so, our faith will be strengthened.

I was going to write a bit about Jacob’s prophecy concerning his sons, but I am going to skip over that because I want to wrap up with what Joseph said to his brothers after Jacob’s death.  After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that now Joseph would extract his revenge for what they had done to them.  When his brothers threw themselves upon his mercy, Joseph told them not to be ridiculous.  He would not put himself in the place of God.  While his brothers had intended him harm, the result of their action was greater good than he could have ever hoped for if they did not commit the crime against him (I was going to say “greater good than he have ever dreamed of, but then I realized that he HAD dreamed of it).  When we think that others have done us wrong, we should remember what Joseph said here.  They may have meant to harm us, but God will use it for our good.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.