It’s another time to share with you our newest review on Israel and The Church. Today we picked another subtopic titled “What led the Israelites to Egypt”. From our previous series, we have studied this subject; taking our journey from the book of Genesis, pointing out different characters, and lessons for us to inculcate what they did right, and learn from what they did wrong.
Text: Amos 3: 1, I Corinthians 10:1-6, Genesis 37:3, Isaiah 66:5
God has always been a God of choices. Over the course of this teaching, we have seen how God projected his choices in the people he chooses to transfer “The faith”. Now after Noah, God continued moving with his seeds down to the point where Isaac came into the picture. He gave birth to twins, the interesting thing about God’s choice was that he decided to go with just one (Jacob) and rejected one (Esau), won’t you say God is mean? How can God just come out to say he loved Jacob before they came out of their mother’s womb? – Now God went on with Jacob, he was the foundation of the nation Israel, he was not the best of choices from the human angle, but God who knows what he want chose him.
Jacob was the worst when compared with Esua in terms of their character, but by grace, he was chosen by God to continue his plan of building a family for himself. Now that we understand how Jacob came into the picture and the process of God from the beginning in building for himself a family, we want to study 3 characters that emits from Jacob and his family in general:
- Jacob’s character
- Joseph Character
- Characters of Joseph 11 Brethren
We are doing this so we can learn from their rights and wrongs, most especially their wrongs which led them to Egypt. All these things were written for our learning.
What did Jacob do wrong while managing his family?
- Showing preferences among the children: This is a common occurrence in families today. Parent with this kind of attitude creates problems for their family. This was exactly what Jacob incurred in his family by preferring Joseph to the rest of his brethren. You cannot expect his brothers to be happy knowing fully well that their father chose to get only one of them a coat of many colors. What happened to the rest of them? Are they having two heads? Please avoid this in your families. Do not segregate the children even if you have one that is wayward, because it will not yield a good result. Another angle to pick from, was Jacob preferring Rachael to Leah, this alone, caused God to close the womb of Rachael and open that of Leah because she was extremely hated (Genesis 29:31). The negative part of showing preferences is two-sided, it brings problems to the person in the act and the person who is being preferred. Joseph and his father paid dearly for this.
- Pride: Pride kills a man even with God’s promise over his life. No matter what God has promised you; if you are proud, you will not enjoy God, and if you are a covenant child just like Joseph, God will have to work upon you the hard way so you can be useful in his hand. One of the key factors that led Joseph to Egypt was his pride, he began to see himself better than the rest because he could see visions and dreams, the same way some of us are. If you walk this kind of path as a child of God, you are on your way to Egypt.
- Rejecting God’s Chosen: This was the mistake of Joseph’s brethren, which we ought to learn from. It has nothing to do with the previous behavior of Joseph, God’s concern is your reactions to situations per-time. They rejected God’s chosen vessel because of their biases. Joseph of Cos had God’s covenant upon his life as a deliverer, someone whom God was going to use but they were blinded to this, there was no one among them who had spiritual insights into what God had in store, they ended up throwing away God’s gift to Egypt. This singular act also led them to Egypt. If You reject God’s own gift for your life, you are on your way to Egypt no doubt about that. The good gift of Joseph which was supposed to benefit them went to boost the economy of a different country, that is what envy and jealousy can cause. Brethren, we cannot also be in this act and enjoy God, and this is the alarm we have come to sound as you read through this review
Please remain in your God’s given position. Be exactly where God wants you to be in the body of Christ, therein lies your blessings. It’s a pity that people are more focused on being somebody else and because of this they are not fruitful. Christians today are occupied with the spirit of envy comparing themselves to somebody else and fighting the grace of God upon people’s life. We must pray God should deliver us from the spirit of envy, because with this spirit in us we cannot grow.
Another thing to learn from the character of Joseph is “reservation”, this is something he lacked. A Christian is supposed to be a reserved person regardless. Joseph could have saved himself from being a slave if only he was reserved enough to contain what God had revealed to him. Today we have Christians who talk anyhow without caution, forgetting that not everybody is happy with your progress. Joseph was a victim of this after relating to his brethren his dream. They were already full of envy. You cannot please someone who is envious of you (At all), no matter what Joseph did he was seen as a threat to them, and they could not but sell him out to Egypt. Do you know that this envious act of theirs was also the reason they left for Egypt? If only they had Joseph in their midst they could have been saved out of famine, but they sold out the gift of God to enhance another country. Are we sure we have not done the same or doing the same today?
Saints of God, we need to rid ourselves of these acts, especially the spirit of envy in others to be blessed by God. I pray God help us.
Join us next week as we continue on this series
Stay Blessed.