Stripped: Trusting God When He Allows Others to Hurt Youಮಾದರಿ

Written into these chapters, we have an incredible display of what it means to be healed and restored. Joseph could have sold food to his brothers and let them go back home without stirring up the hornets’ nest that would unequivocally follow. Yet, his deeper understanding of God’s purposes in spite of the agony he went through, and his words and actions, demonstrated that the fine linen he wore was more than physical. His character was fine linen too.

His tears were normal and expected after the history they shared, but the proof of his forgiveness came in the form of provisions and blessings. He showed love and concern even for the nephews and nieces he had never met. He knew the brother’s families depended on them returning with food, and he gave it to them...freely. He sent them back with plenty to ensure their survival. Joseph blessed his enemies and those who had betrayed and persecuted him.

There’s more and it gets better. When the brothers returned to Egypt the second time, Joseph did not reveal his identity right away either; his emotions surfaced and he stepped away to cry after seeing Benjamin.

Now came the real test to prove if his brothers had learned their lesson and changed their hearts. You’ve read the chapters, you know that Joseph prepared a meal for them and treated them kindly. With the famine two years in, who knows how long the brothers had gone without eating meat. Joseph must have been happy to have a meal again with his brothers, even if they were sitting at separate tables.

But there are other lessons in these verses that brought the story full circle for me. Joseph commanded his steward to fill the men’s bags with as much food as they could carry, to return their silver, and to hide his cup, the silver one, in Benjamin’s bag. Then he sent the steward to go after the brothers to test them with the same scenario they had failed at years earlier.

Given the opportunity, would they leave the new favored son behind or would they do the right thing for Benjamin?

“Then the steward proceeded to search, beginning with the oldest and ending with the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin’s sack. At this, they tore their clothes. Then they all loaded their donkeys and returned to the city…” (Genesis 44:12-13, NIV).

Oh, how the tables have turned! Those who stripped Joseph now strip themselves and face the same precarious situation they forced on Joseph 22 years ago. At no fault of their own, they were bound for slavery and being separated from their own families in a foreign land. But the brothers were not willing to do the same thing to their dad or Benjamin.

As Judah promised his father, he took full responsibility; although innocent in this case, he pleaded with Joseph to take him as a slave in place of Benjamin. Judah lived with the consequences of what he did to Joseph for far too long. He watched his father’s grief consume him and would rather give up his freedom than repeat the sins of his past. That display of remorse and repentance moved Joseph, and he could no longer contain his emotions or his secret.

In those few revealing minutes, 12 different stories defined by that moment back in Dothan collided in a heavenly-ordained reunion that defied all expectations. Rising above his nightmarish ordeal, Joseph embraced and kissed each brother with forgiveness, compassion, and kindness.

But don’t miss God’s incredible storytelling and His mastery in wrapping up loose ends:

“To each of them he gave new clothing, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five sets of clothes” (Genesis 45:22, NIV)

The one who was stripped clothed those who stripped him.

He covered the brokenness of his brothers in the ultimate act of grace. In the practical, yet symbolic gesture of giving them new clothes, he released his brothers from their flawed identities: guilty, unfavored. In that act of mercy he paved the way for them to walk under new identities: forgiven, loved, worthy, clothed.

Like moving tectonic plates, patterns perpetuated in their family for years began to shift seismically. The events in that meeting were glimpses of God’s redemptive purpose at work to transform and shape people to love Him and live righteously, and were a demonstration of the power of forgiveness.

Joseph’s life was a foreshadowing of Jesus several hundred years later. Some similarities were that they were both:

• stripped
• betrayed by those closest to them
• sold for a few pieces of silver
• falsely accused and imprisoned
• forgiving of the ones who betrayed them
• clothed in fine linen (Jesus’s body for burial)

How marvelous, how undeserved, how powerful! The King of the Universe sacrificed to redeem those who stripped Him, offering a new identity and clothing to all who accept His gift of grace.