Sunday, July 12, 2015

Responsibility - the purpose of God's child education

Then Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and you and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life. Genesis 43

The book of Genesis consists of 50 chapters. Of the fifty chapters thirty chapters are assigned to describing the life of Joseph. Joseph occupies three out  of five! Genesis is known as the Code Book for God's Salvation. Question then becomes, "Why did the Lord assign three fifths of the book to describing the life of Joseph?"

I think we can find the answer to the question in what Judah said to his father Jacob, that is, to teach his children the responsibility for the safety of brethren. 
In the book of Genesis God made efforts to produce children. His efforts produced the result: Israel bearing 11 sons out of which 70 came out. Genesis 46:21 

But the problem is the quality of children, not the quantity. If all of his children do not love one another, hate each other, hit each other, soon they would all turn out to be children of the devil, bound to destruction. 

Since the fall of the first man Adam and Eve, children started coming out, but the children registered the same problem from the first family: Cain the first son of the first couple murdered his younger brother Abel! 

Number of people increased on the surface of the world, but since the problem remained unaddressed, eventually all became good for nothing, so after ridding the earth of them via the flood except Noah's family, the Lord made a new beginning. Out of Noah came out Abraham, then Isaac then Jacob called Israel who in turn produced eleven. What was the quality of the eleven? 

The problem remains still unaddressed. The Eleven were the hodgepodge of kids from four different moms! There was no unity of love among them. No wonder that after lynching through Judah's initiative they sold Joseph in a slave market. 

How did the Lord solve the problem? In the account of the so called "Joseph's love" as narrated in Genesis 30-50, using Joseph, the Lord taught his children the sense of responsibility knowing how to be responsible for the life of fellow brethren. 


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