We’ve seen Joseph at a place where everything bad is happening to him.  He’s experienced undeserved suffering.  He was abused and betrayed by his brothers; sold as a slave and taken to a country far from home when he was just a teenager; imprisoned by his master, even though Joseph was surely the most capable and trustworthy slave ever.  And then he suffered, forgotten in prison in a land far from home.

That’s the point in life where you ask those questions like: How could a loving God let this happen?  Surely, he’s abandoned his child; he wasn’t powerful enough to prevent it; or maybe he just doesn’t exist.

Throughout the narrative, though, we’ve been given hints that God was with Joseph through it all.  He hadn’t abandoned his child, and he wasn’t lacking the power to influence the circumstances.

And finally we start to see God turning things around for Joseph.

We’re going to look at this turning-around in its context for a minute – not just the context of the Joseph narrative, but the context of the book of Genesis.

And what I really want us to look at is the theme of blessing that is throughout the book.

It starts in the first chapter.  As soon as people are created, the first thing God does is bless them.  And the blessing has to do with children, land, and ruling.  Both the people and the land are fruitful.

This is all happening in the perfect garden of Eden.  But as you know, the people mess that up.  They rebel against God and now there’s a curse in play.  The curse affects child-bearing, distorts the ruling part of blessing, and they get expelled from the fruitful Eden-land.

Now, throughout the book of Genesis, there is this tension between curse and blessing.

This book really is a literary masterpiece in the way these two are played against each other.

Sin is what caused the curse, and sin continues to interfere with the blessing. The rest of the book is designed to show us that while the curse persists, so does the blessing, and no matter what people may do to try and thwart it, God is devoted to the blessing.

Genesis records some pretty heinous sin and we wonder why.  But those narratives are part of the masterpiece.

We read of the people’s sin and the suffering and corruption it causes, and we think, “oh no, the curse has won out; the blessing is dead.”  But then we’re given hints of hope, and those hints are almost always is given with blessing-language.  The author uses words, phrases, or images from the original blessing in new context to remind us blessing is still alive.