PEGGY’S REFLECTIONS ON WEEKS 2 & 3, JANUARY 09
Set Bible Reading: Gen 20 -50 and Matt 1- 13

If you are following the set bible reading schedule, you would have completed the first book of the Bible, Genesis and also be almost half way through the first New Testament book, Matthew.

I have picked two characters described in Gen 20-50 for reflection and comment because we can draw much theological understanding and practical application significance from their lives:

1. Joseph

Joseph not only forgave his brothers for planning to kill him then selling him as a slave to Egypt but he assured them that what they did to him was an integral part of God’s plan to save lives during the famine. He saw the hand of God rather than his brother’s evil, in their betrayal of him. What an amazing (and correct) perception of God and His sovereignty in history and our personal lives! And what an attitude towards those who betrayed him!

Genesis 45:5; 50:1
Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here; for God did send me before you to preserve life....But as for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day to save much people alive.

When we face injustice, offences, betrayals etc, we are tempted to be angry or vindictive to the offender (s). Not Joseph, he did not forget that God is in control and that if these misdeeds were permitted by Him, then He had a bigger and better plan or purpose which might require these ‘trials of our faith’ (1 Pet 1:7). We need to learn to trust that God is always sovereign – in history and in our lives – and has only "plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future.” (Jer 29:11)

Many would say that ‘theology’ (the study of our God) is meant only for theologians. Not true, every Christian has to be able theologians … to know our God as He is and revealed to us in the Bible. Dr Gordon Fee, New Testament Professor of Regent College, Vancouver, another of my highly regarded scholars and teachers, urges all pastors to help their congregations become excellent ‘practical theologians’. The more we know God as revealed in the bible (not in the figment of our imagination or according to our ideology) the more secure and ‘complete’ (Cols 2:10) we can become in Christ, His Son, despite our life circumstances. And this is not ‘head knowledge’ but knowledge of God as lived out in our lives … as with Joseph.

Joseph was a par excellent practical theologian. He understood as well, that sin was “against God and God alone.” Hence in retort to Potiphar’s wife, he cried out,

Genesis 39:9
There is none greater in this house than I; neither has he (Potiphar) kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

Joseph did not say that he couldn’t and wouldn’t sin against Potiphar who had after all entrusted him with everything but his wife. He like King David in Psalm 51:4, understood that sin is always first and primarily against God Himself.

When we grasp this doctrinal truth regarding sin, it helps us to forgive those who have done evil or injustice to us. It helps us to release our ‘offenders’ and ‘offence’ to the ‘Judge of all the earth who will do that which is right and just’ (Gen 18:25) and against whom the sin is committed.

2. Judah

Jesus is from the line of Judah, we all know that. But why Judah? He is after all the fourth son of Jacob.

God is free to ‘elect’ whoever for fulfillment of His plan, especially His great plan of salvation for humanity. But let us look at why the first three sons of Jacob were disqualified from this messianic lineage.

Reuben was the first born. But he had defiled his father’s bed by having sexual relations with his father’s concubine, Bilhah (Gen 35:22).

Simeon and Levi were the second and third sons. But they committed murder and were ‘instruments of cruelty’ (Gen 49:5) when they plotted against Shechem and killed him, his son and all the males in the city – Gen 34.

So it is with us in our personal lives. I recollect someone asking me why someone he knew was clearly ‘called’ of God to serve as a pastor / minister could now no longer function as one. The answer is evident and simple. He had disqualified himself through personal moral sin.

We need to grasp Paul’s understanding of the privilege and serious responsibility of serving the Lord when he wrote to Timothy, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.” It is the Lord Himself who puts us into the ministry and only because He has counted us faithful. Let us therefore be faithful to Him and the ministry that he has entrusted us with. Let us not disqualify ourselves from the blessing of being counted worthy of His calling.

As a postscript, Reuben of course is also much like Christ our Redeemer … willing to suffer in place of his brother, Benjamin, paying the ransom with his own life when Joseph uncovered the money that he had planted in his sack (Gen 43:9).

I will post my reflections of Matthews 1-13 separately.

Love
A Peggy