Law – Genesis 48-50

After 2 months, we have now arrived at the last passage of the first book of the Bible – Genesis.

Bible Passage:  Genesis 48-50

This closes a chapter in the life of the Patriachs of Israel and ends with the Israelites living in the land of Egypt.

Jacob had died and despite the worries of the brothers of Joseph, no harm came upon them as Joseph considered that the evil that was planned against him was actually God’s wondrous plan in motion.  I’ll talk more about this later.

But we see in today’s passage the different individual blessings that Jacob gave to each of his sons before he died.  If you were to make a detailed record, you can see that all the blessings of Jacob were remarkably accurate and indeed, God’s working is very clear.

Since the stories are all so familiar to us, I just have one verse that I would like to share my thoughts on:

Genesis 50:20

But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.

In one of my past postings, I have talked about why marrying an unbeliever is a great sin against God because it can potentially harm many many people.

But in this verse, it talks about many people that are saved.

Who were the many people to be saved alive?

Well, certainly it included the whole household of Israel at that time – around 70 people.

Yet, many more people benefited from Joseph’s position as the prime minister of the land during the famine.  God used Joseph to save Pharoah and his people during the famine because of his good planning and management during the years of plenty.

But that help also extended to the surrounding countries as all struggle to find food.

So just as through the Israelites, the world was saved then, now through Jesus, the whole world is saved as well.

Salvation is made available to the people of the world.  So the many that Jospeh talked about has exceeded what he probably had in mind.

Think about it.  When God tells us to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth and make disciples of all nations – our work will not just affect a handfull – but save a great number of people.

Let us work with God on this.