"Blessed" Genesis 45:16-46:27 Pastor Allan Wooters, D.Min.
Today we’re going to consider the implications of just one word. That word is blessed. I love it when I ask a random stranger how they are. I walk up to the counter at some store and ask the clerk “How are you?” Usually I hear, “I’m fine,” or “I’m good,” or “I’m as happy as if I had good sense!” But the response I really enjoy is, “I’m blessed!”
A quick look at social media seems to indicate that many folks are blessed. They are hashtag “blessed” (#Blessed). It’s like a movement of some sort. Your child gets citizen of the week at school? #Blessed! Receive a good report from the doctor? #Blessed? College scholarship? Unexpected raise? At Dairy Queen, you discover you get two blizzards for the price of one sale? Why #Blessed! Some say this “I’m blessed” stuff is just a way of boasting while appearing to be humble. But I disagree! #Naysayers! Affirming you’re blessed can and should be a sincere way of affirming your joy over some experience. Regardless of how you see the popularity of the #Blessed movement, being blessed is a key theme of Scripture. It is clearly in view in the passage we consider from Genesis 45 and 46.
In a stunning and heart-rendering moment, Joseph had revealed his identity to his brothers. He sought to comfort them by stating that everything that had happened in years past had been used by God for good. Then Joseph promises to take care of his brothers and their families. He would personally help them, supply them with homes, food, protection, and more, they would finally enjoy being a real family. If anyone could write #Blessed over their life, it was Joseph and his family.
In our text, the theme of blessing is expanded. Read 45:16 – 23. Here we are given some insights on the issue of blessing. Did you catch it how Benjamin was given far more money and clothing than his brothers (vs.21 – 22)? We might think this special treatment was unfair, but it highlights a fact about God’s blessings that we need to remember. That fact is that not everyone receives the same blessings.
Everyone Does Not Receive the Same Blessings
Benjamin gets far more! It’s like he not only gets the biggest piece of cake; it’s like he gets eleven of the twelve slices while his brothers have to share one slice. But this is life isn’t it? We are all blessed in various ways but it’s easy to pick out those folks who are blessed way beyond us. What do we make of this?
One thing is for sure, since according to James 1:17, God is the source of all good things, in other words, all the blessings we receive, we can say this: the Lord is not a socialist! Nowhere in all of God’s Word do you find it taught that God desires all people to have the exact same level of blessings. It doesn’t matter whether those blessings are influence, material stuff, success, you name it. Now God does desire that all people be respected, helped when in need, and given every opportunity to improve their lives. But that everyone should have the same amount of stuff, success, and talent, no!
For example, Jesus told a parable we call “The Laborers in the Vineyard.” It’s found in Matthew 20:1 – 16. There was a landowner who needed men to harvest his crop. All day long he hires workers. When the day ends, he then pays all the men the same wage whether they had worked twelve hours or just one hour. When those who worked the longest complain, the landowner replies, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?” The implication is that God is the owner of all things and how He distributes what is His is His business.
In another parable, the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25: l4 – 30), Jesus tells of a wealthy man who entrusts his wealth to various servants. But the men don’t receive the same. In a measure of money called a “talent” one man gets five talents, another two, and another just one talent. Yet, all three are to work with their talent and try to make more money with it. All three are blessed to have the opportunity to serve their master but why didn’t they each get the same amount to work with? Jesus said it was given to “each according to his own ability” but still, they didn’t get the same. That’s life!
How are we to think about this? Why is it that God doesn’t treat everyone the same? There are two factors. First, we don’t deserve any blessings! This might seem harsh but really, since all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God, what does God owe us? We are traitors, rebels, men and women who by nature are dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2:1f).
Think of it. What did Joseph’s brothers do to earn all the blessings Joseph promises them? They hadn’t done one thing. Indeed, they had committed plenty of literal crimes against Joseph. Yet he blesses them with forgiveness, prosperity, and security.
Second, God can do with His possessions what He wants. Now our Lord is not arbitrary in this. God owns all it is true, but He works with His creation in absolute holiness and righteousness. If He gives more to someone than we get, or we get more success, wealth, certain abilities than others, so what? We don’t then look down on those we call “less fortunate” because what we have, we have by the grace of God, period! We are blessed because God choose out of His love, mercy, and plan for our lives to bless us in a fitting measure. When we see this, it takes away a lot of jealously and envy out of our spirits and replaces it all with gratitude. I could keep expanding on this, but I must move to another truth concerning our being blessed.
In vs.24 – 28 we read of the brothers returning to their father Jacob and telling him that Joseph is alive. Note v.27, “When they told him all the words of Joseph…and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.” It was like Jacob was born anew. Such news was more than Jacob could ever have imagined. If anyone would be entitled to used #Blessed, it would be Jacob. He had been a self-centered schemer, deceiver, had told God on what terms he would serve Him and more. But despite all of that, God dropped a blessing on him that he or anyone else would never have imagined. So, here’s a second fact about blessings: the fulness of God’s blessings are impossible to imagine.
The Fullness of God’s Blessings are Impossible to Imagine
We might not feel all that blessed at times or in general concerning our overall life. We may never seem to make it like so many others, have their talents or breaks. We seem to always be falling just short of being truly blessed. But we must remember that the fullness of our blessings has not yet arrived. When I was struggling to find a way to be able to afford going to seminary, I was at college and asked by a professor if I had received a letter from Southern Seminary, the seminary I had dreamed about attending. I hadn’t but he proceeded to tell me he had submitted my name for a generous Presidential Preaching Scholarship, the biggest Southern granted, and I had received it. I was stunned! Without me knowing it, this wonderful professor had worked to help secure me the funds that helped me go to Southern. It was overwhelming.
Look, we never know what blessings God might give us tomorrow. But more, there is a day coming when the burdens of this life will fall away, when we will enter the joy of our Lord and experience the thrill of heaven and all the blessings God promises us there. The fulness of God’s blessings we can’t imagine. Incredible! But there is a third truth about our blessings. It is that others are blessed by our personal blessings.
Others Are Blessed by Our Personal Blessings
This truth is shown in 46:1 – 7. Jacob is given a vison where God promises to bless him in Egypt but not only him but the large number of family members who were going with him. For years, Jacob hadn’t felt very blessed. He had suffered an incredible loss in believing his son Joseph had been mauled to death. The family dysfunction, so evident in the Joseph story, no doubt continued for years after the presumed loss of Joseph. But what Jacob didn’t see, and what we might struggle to see, is that such pains are gateways to blessing. It’s like singer Laura Story asks in her song Blessings: “What if your blessings come through raindrops…? What if the trials of this life – the rain, the storms, the hardest nights – are [God’s] mercies in disguise?” Those mercies, the blessings we receive, God uses to grace others whether those others are family, friends, or complete strangers. Incredible isn’t it? Indeed, but there is one other truth about being blessed. It is that we are blessed though we are unknown.
Blessed Though We are Unknown
In vs. 8 – 27 we find another genealogy. Why all these names? It’s hard to pronounce most of the names and even if you could say them correctly, so what? Here’s what. Such lists remind us that even though you and I or anyone else today couldn’t possibly know these people, God never forgets His own. He knows these men and women even if no one else does. You see, one day our names will be forgotten by the world, even our own family, unless we are a very exceptional person. But God never forgets.
God will not forget you when you need Him. He will not forget you when you hurt. And He will not forget to bless you according to His perfect will. God never forgot Joseph, or Jacob, or Jacobs sons, and daughters, no one. All of these people listed in this passage were blessed. And it all came about because of Joseph. No! Check that! It was all because of God. God chose to bless Joseph by using him to be a channel of blessing to others. It meant that Joseph had to go through some very hard times but in the end, he was blessed, his family was blessed, and the world was blessed. All were blessed because through this family Jesus would be born as Savior of the world, as your personal Savior.
So, #Blessed? Yes! And the greatest blessing is to know that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. Have you entered into that blessing? If so, all is yours.
For Further Reading
Counterfeit God’s: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only HopeThat Matters, Timothy Keller
Practical Religion, J. C. Ryle