“And Jacob their father said to them, ‘You have bereaved me: Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin. All these things are against me.'” (v.36)
Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain during the famine and they came face to face with their brother Joseph, but they didn’t recognize him. Joseph didn’t reveal himself to them, but kept their brother Simeon and sent the other brothers home, telling them to come back with their youngest brother Benjamin. To Jacob, at this moment, everything seemed to be going against him. It appeared that way in the natural, but the reality was just the opposite. All these things that seemed to be hurting him, were actually working for his good. Famine and sons missing in action were but the hand of God once again moving him along the road of life.
We have all had times in our lives when it seemed like everything was going against us. We fall into the same trap Jacob did when we allow ourselves to think the way he was thinking. Notice that there is no mention of God in Jacob’s words. At this moment in his storm, he had forgotten God. How the Lord had led him so many times before in storms. How God had caused him to prosper during his 20 years working for his Uncle Laban. How God had blessed him after the nightlong wrestling at Penuel. How God had protected him in his meeting with his brother Esau. And God was in this new storm just as much as He had been in the past ones, but Jacob had forgotten the past goodness of God toward him.
When we take God out of the picture, there seems to be no hope. Paul reminded the Ephesians that there is no real hope apart from God: “that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). Without God, there is ultimately no hope; but with God, all things are possible.
The Truth: “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14)
