Ruled by Hatred

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

RULED BY HATRED

Gen 37:12-20

12 Now his brothers had gone to graze their father's flocks near Shechem, 13 and Israel said to Joseph, "As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them." "Very well," he replied. 14 So he said to him, "Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me." Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, 15 a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, "What are you looking for?" 16 He replied, "I'm looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?" 17 "They have moved on from here," the man answered. "I heard them say, 'Let's go to Dothan.'" So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. 18 But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. 9 "Here comes that dreamer!" they said to each other. 20 "Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams."

NIV

The story of the plot thickens as we first see Israel sending his favorite son, who did not go with all the other sons to graze the flocks, to find out how they are doing. We know Israel kept those dreams of Joseph in his mind and he must have known how his other sons felt about Joseph. We wonder why he would then send him alone into the open range to find his brothers. Then we are told when they saw him coming toward them they started to plot how they could kill him. Here is the truth we need to pay attention to. Revenge is an awful emotion or attitude of the heart. We also know we would not find this attitude in the church, but in this world, it does run rampant to coin a phrase, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world”. We have been taught by our Lord to always turn the other cheek when we have been offended. Of course, we would think we would never have to turn the other cheek within the body of Christ. However, this revengeful attitude turned into action from the brothers against Joseph. Hatred is what festered the mindset of revenge. We should always be on guard regarding having any ill feelings about anyone, especially within the church, although that should also apply as we live in the world. To love and hate at the same time is completely impossible, as we cannot serve two masters. There was no love in the hearts of those brothers, for their hatred turned to an action even against their own father, causing him a great deal of pain. What we see is that our actions toward others also affect even more people than we might know. If we are demonstrating love to everyone, someone else will find out, and if by chance we express some negative comment, we can be sure others are going to find that out as well, for we know one thing for sure that gossip is doing well in the world and in the church. This hurt against their father was due to their willingness to lie to him about what happened to his favorite son. We can also be sure lies will eventually be found out. We know none of this horrible family drama happens within the body of Christ, but we must be aware that we are always being watched out in the world, we are always being a witness for Jesus, one way or another. Let us always be a witness for and of Jesus in both the church and the world, ruled by love and not by how the brothers were ruled by hatred.