Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Saturday, July 14, 2018 | Topic: Conscience 71
Scripture: And when they saw Joseph afar off, even before he came near to them, they conspired against him to slay him. Genesis 37:18
Note: The death sentence that was hanging on the neck of Joseph, completely unknown to him before his eventual arrival, was quashed by Reuben, who spoke in favour of Joseph. Shell shocked, Joseph must have been surprised at the sudden development concerning his fate. Having begun a peaceful journey from the presence of Jacob, with all that preoccupied his mind being the welfare of his brothers, never in his wildest imagination could he suspect that for once his willingness to leave the comfort and safety of his father’s bosom could cost him his life at the hands of his treacherous and wicked brothers.
Getting someone to be willing to speak for you or on your behalf, in your absence, can have the comforting effect of a soothing balm. Not many people will be willing to speak for other people in trouble when they reckon the anger situation of the aggressors as volatile and too dangerous should the collective anger be turned against them. Some intermediaries have unfortunately lost their lives or seriously maimed through anger redirected at them for daring to intervene during such boiling moments.
Aside the risks involved in getting a willing person to speak on your behalf, most people under distress facing severe crowd brutality, are unable to court an intervention from the right person with sufficient clout to speak on their behalf. Aside Reuben being the firstborn son and leader of the delegation, none of Joseph’s brothers at the scene of the brutalities that found him stripped of his coat of many colours, which was an incendiary source of attraction for extreme hatred for victim Joseph, had the necessary clout with sufficient weight to have been unanimously accepted for intervention on behalf of Joseph.
God chose the right man in Reuben, at the right moment to speak the right things that brought deliverance into Joseph’s life. At that material moment in Joseph’s life, it was practically impossible for him to have saved his own life. Joseph was not given a fair trial. He wasn’t given a hearing nor the right to defend himself. He had been sentenced to death in absentia and execution was to follow immediately. Just as all men sinned in Adam, hence were guilty facing the wrath of God, Reuben, playing the role of a deliverer in Jesus Christ, was the one man with the clout, who was accepted by God to offer a one time sacrifice through the eternal Spirit with the shedding of his blood on behalf of man.
Food for thought: Every act of deliverance requires an element of sacrifice. The levels of intensity in the sacrifice may vary but it’s still necessary.
Declaration: For then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world has He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Heb 9:26
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
