What Am I, Offensive? Part 3

What Am I, Offensive? Part Three 

“And He said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” Luke 17:1-4 (ESV) 

According to John Bevere’s book, “The Bait of Satan” there is one thing to keep in mind when we think of being offended is that we can group all of those offended people, to include ourselves, into two major categories: those who have been genuinely mistreated and those who think they have been mistreated but actually were not. I would like to look at those who have been genuinely mistreated category and will start off by asking this question: If you’ve been genuinely mistreated, do you have the right to be offended? Let’s see if that has any weight when we finally take a look at the Old Testament character of Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph. His story starts in Genesis 37 and goes on until the end in chapter 50.  By the time you have read the first four verses of Joseph’s story he has already offended his brothers…severely!  

When we look into the life of Joseph the first thing we need to do is to go back a few chapters to chapter 28 of Genesis rush through it and try to get a brief overview of the background story. So here we go…after Isaac (Joseph’s Granddad) actually calls Jacob (Joseph’s dad) to bless him, Jacob is sent out to Padan Aram to get a wife from Rebekah’s (Joseph’s Grandmom, Jacob’s Mom) brother, Laban. When Jacob arrives in the land he spots flocks of sheep with their shepherds and asks where he can find Laban. While he is speaking with the shepherds Rachel (Joseph’s mom) arrives with her father’s flock of sheep. Jacob is awestruck and he rolls away a stone that is covering the well that all the flocks are congregating at and then he gives Rachel a kiss, falls in front of her, weeps and tells her who he is. Then there is much rejoicing as Rachel goes running to her father.  

Laban and Jacob strike an understanding that Jacob is gonna work for one of Laban daughters as a wife but she will not be Jacobs first pick as Laban sends in Rachel’s sister Leah into Jacobs tent and once Jacob realizes that Laban has tricked him he goes and confronts Laban. So Laban and Jacob come to another understanding and then Jacob gets the wife he wanted, who would be Rachel. And as we breeze through the rest of Jacob’s tale Joseph is born and during the birth of Joseph’s brother, Benjamin, Rachel dies. Needless to say that once we have traversed the Scripture we can get the idea that Joseph will be Jacob’s favorite son because Jacob really wanted Rachel first and Joseph is the son of Jacob’s old age. And then as we read on in chapter 37 there are two dreams you find in Genesis 37:5-11.

Now if we are familiar with Joseph’s story we know what’s gonna be next. Joseph is sent out to see what the other brothers are up to and they plot to kill him. But due to the craftiness of Judah he is sold into slavery for twenty shekels of silver. Joseph had offended his brothers so much that they plotted together to betray him, taking away his inheritance and deliberately separating him from his family. Keep in mind that these are his brothers doing this to him. Same father, same flesh and blood. They blotted his name out and stripped him of his identity. I don’t think being born into slavery is a good thing but to be sold into it sends a clear and very ugly message. He may have been tempted at times to wish his brothers had killed him considering what they had done was evil and cruel. But this story doesn’t end here does it? No it doesn’t! 

Even looking into the lives of Joseph’s parents and grandparents we can see those moments of possible and probable offense. But the thing here to keep in mind is that no matter how offending the circumstances may have seemed to them, the will of God continued on whether anyone bothered to notice or not. So it is with our ever present daily comings and goings. The sun goes up and goes down all the while the tide comes in and then goes out, whether we pay any attention to it or not. I’ll wrap this up in my next Freedom Fighter. – Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and a frequent Freedom Fighter contributor

GPS – God’s Positioning System: 2 Samuel 16-18; Psalm 114; Proverbs 5

Compass Pointers: “When the heart is stung with a sense of wrong, injustice, misrepresentation and cruel hate, nothing but the very power of supernatural grace can enable us to love those who wrong us and bless those who hate."     Walking in Love A.B. Simpson

Navigation Rules to Memorize: Level 1: Proverbs 18:10; Level 2: Proverbs 18:1-8

Anchored to the Rock: Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the night.