Deliverance from Evil: Genesis 50:15-21 - 18th Sunday after Pentecost

Here’s a story with all the makings of a reality show on TLC: Jacob, the Old Testament patriarch who was the father of twelve boys and one girl born to his two wives and their maidservants.

This family dynamic was the perfect recipe for the kind of drama and dysfunction that would keep everyone tuning in week after week to find out what happens next.

But like many TLC reality shows, the dysfunction was a powder keg waiting to explode—and it was Jacob who lit the fuse.

Click here to read the Scripture text

It all begins with Jacob violating the first rule of parenting: don’t favor one child over the others. Joseph was the eleventh of his twelve sons, and he was, by far, the favorite, because he was born to Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel. And boy, did he spoil him. He dressed him in a colorful robe and exempted him from back-breaking work of tending to the flocks as he did his other sons. 

As you would expect, Joseph acted like a spoiled brat. He was a tattletale. And he was full of himself. He told his brothers of a dream he had where he ruled over them. 

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

This enrages his brothers so much that they conspire to kill him. But they quickly discover an easier way to get rid of him for good: they sell him to foreign merchants for the paltry sum of twenty pieces of silver—roughly $600 in today’s money. Then, they go home and tell their father that his favorite son had been eaten by a wild animal. While Jacob mourns, the merchants sell Joseph into slavery to an Egyptian named Potiphar. Soon, he’s thrown into prison when Potiphar’s wife makes false accusations against him.

But Joseph had a knack for interpreting dreams, and news of his talent soon reaches the Pharoah. After Joseph interprets his dream about a forthcoming seven-year famine, Pharoah makes Joseph his right-hand man. Thanks to him, Egypt stores up its surpluses of grain during the years of plenty, so that when the famine finally strikes, the Egyptians don’t starve.

Back home, Joseph’s family is on the brink of starvation. Desperate for grain to feed themselves and their flocks, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy some and bring it back home. This is what leads to the surprise reunion we heard about in today’s first reading, and Joseph’s bold statement: “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.”

So, this tragic story of jealousy and betrayal has a happy ending. But it didn’t happen overnight. It took decades to get here.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go from being the jewel in his father’s crown to being sold at a yard sale price by his own brothers. This isn’t mere abandonment. Joseph’s brothers threw him away like he was garbage.

In time, Joseph likely realized that his behavior towards his brothers was wrong, and that it was wrong for their father to favor him as he did. Still, what his brothers did to him was evil. What Potiphar and his wife did to him was evil.

Most of us know what it’s like to suffer evil. Some people, more than others—particularly those who are enslaved, exploited, or persecuted simply for being who they are. But while many suffer war, terror, and genocide, others are prisoners of domestic abusers and people in positions of power. Ask a child what it’s like to go to school and be bullied by your classmates, day in and day out.

Oftentimes, the hardest evil to break free from is the evil you do to yourself, through bad choices, self-destructive behaviors, or your own bad thoughts. Your mind becomes your worst enemy. You bully yourself over what you’ve done. One of the evilest thoughts you can have is “I am not good enough.”

There are also evils that just happen. Cancers and disease are evil. Mental illness is evil. Addiction is evil. Death is evil. Natural disasters are evil.

Yet through all the evil Joseph suffered, God didn’t abandon him to destruction. I’m sure there were times when it felt like God did. But that’s when God shows up: when you’re at your lowest point, at your wits’ end, helpless and defeated.

God’s good intents meet evil’s destructive intents, and God conquers, one gift at a time, one good deed at a time, one day at a time. Evil doesn’t go away when God shows up. But God frees you from its chains.

That old cliché “God never gives you more than you can handle” implies that God gives people cancer or take their loved ones away before their time. God doesn’t do that! But when the unthinkable happens, God takes that evil and uses it for a higher purpose.

God took Joseph’s brothers hateful and vicious act and began working, from moment one, to bring his family to Egypt, where they would survive the famine. This way, God’s promises would be fulfilled to his father Jacob, to his grandparents Isaac and Rebekah, and his great grandparents Abraham and Sarah. Salvation had been happening behind the scenes until it became clear for all to see. Someday, you will see clearly and fully God’s good purposes fulfilled through your hardships. Maybe not in this life.

But no matter what, God will be good to you today in small but significant ways: in mercies that happen when you need them most, in people who love and support you, in the people you will bless through your love and good deeds. All it takes is for you to heed God’s call to be still in his presence and know that your prayers are being heard.

Evil’s intents are no match for God’s good intents. God will conquer, one gift at a time, one good deed at a time, one day at a time.