Restoring
Dominion
Stephen
Terry
Commentary for the July 9, 2016 Sabbath School Lesson
“So
the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was
made responsible for all that was done there.” Genesis 39:22, NIV
One of the most revered characters in the Old Testament
is Joseph.[i] He was one of the twelve
sons of Jacob. Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah, sisters. He also fathered
children with their two handmaids. Although his wife, Leah, bore Joseph the
most sons, Jacobs love for Rachel was greater. This created jealousy with Leah’s
six sons keenly aware of every favoritism shown by Jacob to Rachel’s firstborn,
Joseph. Perhaps a precipitating factor in events to follow, Jacob gave Joseph a
colorful coat which could be taken to signify his choice of Joseph as primary
heir. Jacob may have intended it as a token of affection and condolence since
Joseph had lost his mother when she gave birth to his younger brother,
Benjamin. But this was not the only factor that finally caused the roiling
jealousy to boil over. Joseph also had some dreams, and he was not very
circumspect in sharing the dreams with his siblings.
In the first dream sheaves of gran carried by his brothers
bowed down to his sheaf of grain. While this may be a metaphor for the family’s
inability to produce adequate food to feed themselves
and Joseph’s future role in keeping them fed, what was understood by his
brothers was Joseph was having dreams of ruling over the rest of the family.
This they found intolerable. Later, in his second dream, the sun, moon and
eleven stars bowed before him. This dream he also shared with his father and Jacob understood this to mean also that the
entire family would bow before Joseph. This must have been a difficult time for
Joseph. With the loss of his mother when Benjamin was born, he had no one to
advocate for him in the jealous infighting in the family except his father. We
can be fairly certain that this dream occurred after Rachel’s death because of
the number of the stars, Benjamin being the eleventh star.[ii] Also, there was only one
moon which likely referred to Leah, since Rachel had died.
The upshot of all the jealousy was that Joseph was sold
into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Purchased by Potiphar, an Egyptian
noble, he rose to a position of important responsibility in that household only
to be betrayed by Potiphar’s wife and ending up in prison. But even in prison,
Joseph proved trustworthy and was given responsibility for the care of the
other prisoners. Through a series of dreams dreamt by a baker, a butler and the
Pharaoh himself, Joseph was able to provide interpretations and rise to a
position of great prominence in Egypt as a result. In doing so, he also eventually
saw his earlier dreams fulfilled that had caused his family so much
consternation.
Why do I share this story? It is simply to bring to
light that no matter what happened to Joseph, no matter that he was betrayed,
no matter that at several points his earlier dreams may have seemed impossible
of realization, he continued to recognize his responsibility to God and to
those around him. He could have become a “sad sack” filled with bitterness and
refusing to do anything, excusing himself by the betrayals that had knocked him
down so many times. But he did not. Instead he took over responsibility for
whatever work was near at hand. In doing so, others recognized his faithfulness
in those responsibilities and gave him greater ones. As his resulting influence
grew, he became a man God could use for greater things. As a result, God placed
him where he not only saved his family from the famine predicted by Pharaoh’s
dream, but the entire Egyptian nation as well. This can also be our experience.
You see we have been betrayed, too. We were betrayed by
that primal pair that chose to follow their own selfish desires before that
baleful tree in the Garden of Eden rather than glorify God through their
faithfulness.[iii]
Whether they understood it or not, their choice not only brought evil ends upon
themselves but all of their posterity and all of creation, too. Perhaps the
worst inheritance that they passed on to us from that day was an unwillingness
to accept responsibility. Eve blamed the snake for what she had done. Adam
blamed Eve and by implication, God who created her. We are still doing this
today every time we think we are better off with someone else other than the
spouse we have joined ourselves to. It has become such a part of our fallen
natures after so many thousands of years since that first betrayal that we
naturally drift into the blame game when something doesn’t go right. We may
even walk about with a “chip on our shoulder,” expecting someone to send a load
of blame our way as well, even if they mean nothing of the sort. But in every
instance, whether we are shifting the blame to someone else or we are defensively
trying to deflect blame someone is trying to put on us, we are really refusing to
accept responsibility for what has developed. But there has only been One who
was not responsible for what happened to Him. As our eternal example, He
accepted the injustice of the cross to provide an answer for us. He did not
seek to avoid the responsibility thrust upon Him. He embraced it, and because of
that all mankind may now be saved.
Some might look at the mess we are in today and say in their hearts, “What can
I do about it. After all the dominion God gave to mankind was usurped by the
Devil. Since he has been in control, everything continues to deteriorate into
chaos, and darkness and evil are everywhere.” But isn’t this another chapter in
that same blame game? Our oceans are fast becoming vast cesspools. Drug and
alcohol abuse is at epidemic proportions. Violence pours into our homes through
widely available multi-media conduits. It fills our families with pain, anger
and confusion over how to stop it. It then spills into the streets of our cities
and towns. Everywhere there is fear and desperation. Our lives become a
knee-jerk reaction to that fear. For far too many, it is as though a small
voice is speaking to them and saying, “Are you afraid? Get a gun.” We perhaps
do not realize that voice may have originated in thousands of hours of movies
and television shows that we watched where the gun was portrayed as the only
possible answer to the never-ending stream of violence, death and destruction
the media is showing us.
We can break this cycle, but to do so we need to
recognize our responsibility for how bad things have become. Every scenario
that seems impossible to reverse became that way one step at a time. The
pollution cursing our planet began with the attitude that it does not matter if
I drop a wrapper on the ground, as long as I got to enjoy the candy or the fast
food inside the wrapper. In other words, it plays out every time we shirk
responsibility for our actions, no matter how slight that shirking is. Instead of
walking around oblivious to our impact on others and on our world, we should
become the light accepting the responsibility to drive back the darkness. We
should not succumb to the fear that it is too overwhelming. Instead of meekly
submitting to Satan’s desire to rule over us, we should assert our rightful
royal lineage and reclaim responsibility where we can. Is garbage blowing into
my yard? I can either play the blame game and blame whomever failed to secure
their trash upwind from me, hoping that it will blow on through to those
downwind, or I can pick up the trash and secure it myself, not worrying about
who might be to blame for its presence. When I do that, I not only clear my own
yard of trash, but I am a blessing to everyone downwind of me as well.
Being responsible means acting as though you still have
a right to bring God’s principles of love of our neighbor and love of God into
this dominion no matter who claims to have usurped it. As long as we are the
sons and daughters of God, and Jesus restored that to us when He made us his
joint heirs through the cross,[iv] we need to accept
responsibility for what happens here and act like the royal priests we are.[v] We must understand just
like Joseph learned, there is no darkness, not even in prison, where the light
of personal responsibility cannot shine and begin to take back the dominion
that is rightfully ours.
