Weekly Devotional – Starting Mon. Oct 19, 2026
- Monday - Genesis 37-38
- Tuesday - Genesis 39-40
- Wednesday - Genesis 41-42
- Thursday - Genesis 43
- Friday - Genesis 44
- Saturday - Genesis 45
- Sunday - 1 John 3
Welcome to week 3 of Reading and Praying the Bible.
First, how’s your praying going? Don’t worry if it’s not as regular and fulsome as you’d like. It’s happening. God hears. He grows us from where we are to where he is taking us. But if you are sincerely expressing your sense of inadequacy and failure to God but then relying on and rejoicing in his mercy all the more, God is definitely taking you to a good place.
This week’s sermon text is the first part of the story of Cain and Abel. This narrative begins a theme that runs through Genesis: conflict between brothers. What we see between Cain and Abel we see again in Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, and finally in Joseph and his brothers. To that last epic story we will turn for much of the week.
Notice how the story of Joseph develops. Young Joseph is a bit insufferable about being Dad’s favorite. We understand his brothers’ resentment (and we blame Jacob, who is not unlike his father and grandfather in the way he has a favorite), but of course that resentment shouldn’t lead to what it does.
Like Cain, some of the brothers want to kill Joseph. But others talk them down: they will abandon him or finally sell him into slavery.
Thus begins Joseph’s journey of pain. He seems abandoned by God, but in fact God protects him at every point. And we see his insufferable personality yield to something much more noble.
Meanwhile, God is working on the other brothers, especially Judah. His continued duplicity leads him to an outcome of guilt and shame, which he remarkably owns up to.
Finally a crisis leads the brothers to seek help in Egypt, where they meet Joseph, who conceals himself from the brothers. We sense Joseph is conflicted: he wants vengeance, but he also longs for reconciliation. When he presses the point by demanding Benjamin, now his father’s favorite, as a hostage, Judah, transformed by repentance, offers himself as a substitute. That is enough for Joseph to reveal himself.
“You intended it for evil, but God used it for good,” is Joseph’s interpretation of these events.
In Genesis and especially in the story of Cain, conflict between brothers is a microcosm of conflict among humans in general. Cain’s violence spreads from Genesis 4 to Genesis 6, in which people care about nothing but violence. It continues after the flood with Ham’s shameful treatment of his father, and in the story of Babel, as people band together to build a tower, a structure used to project power over other people.
Remarkably, God promises to reverse all this with his blessing on all nations that comes through Abraham’s seed (Genesis 12:1–3), and it’s that very seed who continue the legacy of brotherly conflict. We await the one seed of Abraham, who surrenders himself willingly as the victim of sinful violence so that sinners can be free of sin’s penalty, power, and ultimately its presence. That’s what 1 John 3 will remind us: we are tempted to be like Cain, but we are called to be like Jesus, loving others to the point of laying down our lives for others. It’s a rich and challenging story!
Be blessed as you read and pray.
