The Gospel in Joseph

The effect of guilt: there is always something to fear.  God will realize the guilty one and execute judgement.  At the end of every conversation with Joseph the brothers bring it back to "We have killed our brother now our evil deed has caught up to us!  Surely God has found our iniquity and will bring justice."   Justice is Joseph killing the brothers who sold him into slavery when he first saw them.  Or when they returned for the second time.  Or when the cup was found in Ben's bag.  But Joseph instead spares them, loves them, and eventually feasts with them.

The situation: they are fearful that their actions a decade ago would be found out and punished by God.  They go to Egypt thinking their doomed.  Simeon, the second oldest and most influential outside of Reuben the oldest, probably played a major role in the plot to kill Joseph.  Reuben tries to save Joseph but fails.  Judah suggests to sell his own brother into slavery, even going so far to make money off him.  And the result?  Simeon is imprisoned for a time.  They narrowly escape Egypt a second time (or so the brothers think).  A cup is found in Ben's bag and he, the only innocent one among them, is sentenced to death.  Judah realizes he is the one who is guilty.  He sold Joseph, not Benjamin.  Something inside of him changed when he realized one who was innocent is taking the death he rightfully deserves.  He offers to take Ben's place.  

An innocent man died for me too.  That's why I love the Gospel.

And the climax?  Joseph weeps with joy over his brothers when he has every right to kill them.  

Gen 45:7 "And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.  So now it was not you who sent me here, but God..."

In God's mercy he always spared a remnant of wicked, undeserving Israel.  Jesus came to redeem the lives of others by a "great deliverance."  Not by His will did he endure the Cross, but because God said this is the way it must be.

My buddy Scraw has been writing posts about a guy who asks several influential Christians what they would write if they were told to Twitter the Gospel.  Though incomplete, this would be my answer:

I should die.  But instead I'm blessed.