Genesis #40 - Joseph: The Hidden Hand of God #1 - "In the Brokenness of a Family" (Genesis 37)

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Genesis and chapter 37, Genesis chapter 37 and we're going to read just the first 11 verses.
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We're going to look at the whole chapter in our message, but just to get us started we're going to read chapter 37 verses 1 through 11.
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Genesis chapter 37 from verse 1 through to verse 11, page 32 if you've got one of the
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Bibles that we give away. If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me as we come to the preaching of God's word?
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We do this because we want to show even with the posture of our bodies that we believe that God is speaking to us and we want to reverence his word as it comes.
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So Genesis chapter 37 beginning in verse 1 and reading through to verse 11.
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Hey family, these are God's words to us. Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan.
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These are the family records of Jacob. At 17 years of age,
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Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father.
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Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age and he made a long -sleeved robe for him.
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But his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers. They hated him. They couldn't bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.
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Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, listen to this dream
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I had. There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the land of Canaan to my sheep.
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Are you really going to reign over us? His brothers asked him. Are you really going to rule us?
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So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said.
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Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. Look, he said, I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.
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He told his father and his brothers and his father rebuked him. What kind of dream is this that you have had?
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He said, am I and your mother and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you?
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His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will abide forever. Allow me to pray, ask for the
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Spirit's help, and we will get to work in God's word. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come to your word now, that you would, as I pray almost every week, you would open our eyes that we would see wonderful things out of your word.
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May your Spirit be at work using the preached word to bring glory to your own name.
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May we be challenged, may we be convicted, may we be encouraged, may our souls receive that which you have for us through the preaching of your word this morning.
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And Father, as we pray for ourselves, we pray for our brothers and sisters at Roosh Community Bible Church. Pray for Pastor Lou Consentino over there as he's preaching through First John at the moment.
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Pray for that congregation that they would know your blessing. Thank you for your mercy to them, even with the loss of their pastor a couple of years ago now, providing a new pastor who's able to shepherd the flock and to minister your word.
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Pray that you would bless him, bless those who labor with him. May they be a faithful witness for Christ out there in the apple game.
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Be with them and I pray, Father, be with us now as you open up your word. For we ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen. You may be seated. Well, as I said, we are in our final series in our study in the book of Genesis and I've entitled this series
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Joseph the Hidden Hand of God. I checked my notes and we began this journey in the book of Genesis January 30th, 2022.
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Uh, feels like an age ago for me. And this morning, like I said, we're picking it up in Genesis chapter 37 with a message that I've entitled the
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Hidden Hand of God and the Brokenness of a Family. And the
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Brokenness of a Family. Since it's been a few months since we were last in the book of Genesis, I want to take a moment and just kind of review the big picture of this book that you have in your hands.
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Genesis is volume one of Moses, the prophet, Moses' divinely inspired history of the nation of Israel, particularly its early history.
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And it's written to the people of Israel as they're on the verge of entering the land of Canaan. So there they are on the plains of Moab about to go into the land that God had promised.
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And as they're about to go into this land, God gives Moses these books of the law.
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I say volume one, because really the first five books of your Bible are one book with five volumes.
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The technical term that people use is the Pentateuch simply just means five books or five scrolls.
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And Genesis is volume one of that history. And as you come to it, you can divide the book into two uneven halves.
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This should be familiar for you, those of you who've been in our study of Genesis. Genesis breaks up into two.
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You have four key events and four key people. So chapters one to eleven, nine, cover four key events in human history.
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The term that's often used is this is primeval history, the history of the world as we know it.
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And so you have creation in chapters one and two. You have the fall in chapters three, four, and five. You have the flood in chapter six, seven, eight, and nine.
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And then you have the tower of Babel in chapters 10 through to one, nine, 11, nine, excuse me.
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So the first uneven half of Genesis deals with four key events. It's laying the foundation for everything that we're going to read, not just in Genesis, but in the
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Bible as a whole. And then you have four key people. The technical term is patriarchal history.
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Patriarchs, the father rulers, the originators of the nation of Israel. So the focus goes from the creation of the world to the creation of the nation through whom
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God will work for the majority of the Old Testament. And just like you have four key events, you have four key people.
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So you have Abraham in chapter 11 through chapter 25. You have
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Isaac from chapter 25 to chapter 26 where he dies. You have the story moves to Jacob, who takes up actually quite a big section from chapter 27 through to chapter 36.
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And finally, you have Joseph in chapter 37 to 50, which is where we are in this study.
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You can see that when you study, guys, that I've had this concept that I like to use. It's not original to me, but it's one
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I love. This idea of the melodic line, that whenever you read the book of the Bible, that there is a melodic line that runs through it.
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There is a theme that ties that book together. And a really helpful tool when you read a book of the
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Bible from start to finish is to try to identify what is that melodic line. And my melodic line for the book,
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I put into it more of a paragraph than a sentence, is simply this, that despite the failure of God's covenant people,
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God's purposes and plans will come to fulfillment, not through the faithfulness of others, but through the faithfulness of God.
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Again, that's on your study guide. Despite the failure of God's covenant people, God's purposes and plans will come to fulfillment, not through the faithfulness of others, but the faithfulness of God.
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And that's been really a theme. Do you catch that? Those of you who've been with us, who are studying Genesis, even the most recent series we did, did you get that theme kind of running through this book?
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That you have some really unfaithful people, but there is a faithful God. And because there is a faithful God, his covenant promises and plans will come to fulfillment.
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Our journey in the book of Genesis has led us to three sermon series so far. So we did, way back in 2022,
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Foundations, Genesis 1 through 11, and the Story of Everything. We then did the Gospel According to Abraham, which looked at Abraham's life.
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And most recently, we finished up in the end of February, Unlikely Grace, God's grace in the lives of imperfect people.
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And now we come to this new sermon series, Joseph, the
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Hidden Hand of God. And I've called this series, the Hidden Hand of God, because what we're going to see is how it is that God works to bring about the movement of his people from where they are to where they need to be.
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What do I mean from where they are to where they need to be? For a moment, keep your bulletin or piece of paper or ribbon in Genesis 37, flip all the way back to chapter 15 with me for a moment.
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Genesis chapter 15, this great scene where God comes and he establishes formally his covenant with Abraham.
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Those of you here, when we studied this, you remember this, that it's this wonderful scene where God himself comes down and he makes the covenant by himself.
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He puts Abraham to sleep. So Abraham has no role in it. And he makes a covenant with himself to bless
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Abraham. Pick it up with me in verse 13, Genesis chapter 15 and verse 13. I want to build up some context for what we're about to study here.
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So Genesis chapter 15, verse 13. Then Yahweh, and by the way, when I read the
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Lord in the Old Testament, that's Yahweh, that's God's covenant name. As my late mentor would say, God gave us a name, not a title.
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So that's why I switch out Lord for Yahweh sometimes. Then Yahweh said to Abraham, know this for certain, your offspring will be resident aliens for 400 years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed.
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However, I will judge the nation they serve. And afterward, they will go out with many possessions, but you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.
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In the fourth generation, they will return here. For the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.
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So God says to Abraham in the context of his covenant promises, Abraham, here's what's going to happen.
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A point will come where you end up in a land. Well, not you, but your offspring will end up in a land that isn't theirs.
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They will be enslaved and oppressed, but I will bring them out. Well, as we come to Genesis 37, they're not in a land that's not their own and they're not being enslaved and oppressed.
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So how did they get from where they are to what
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God said would happen? If this is part of God's plan, well, how is this going to happen?
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That's this story. And as we read this story in Genesis 37 -50, what we're going to see if there's one word, was it
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Sesame Street that you say this episode is brought to you by the letter or whatever? Well, this series will be brought to you by the word providence.
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Because what we're going to see is how God orchestrates people and orchestrates events to bring about his providence.
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But our fathers in the faith described as his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing of all his creatures and their actions.
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Some people who have had a wrong view of God have spoken of providence, but they kind of think of providence as this sort of blind force.
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Those of you who read American history, the founding fathers often talk about providence, but most of them lean somewhat deist.
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I'm not going to explain what deist is. Know that it's not the biblical version of God. And so they would often talk about providence, but providence was more of this independent force that God kind of set loose on the world, so to speak.
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But what we're going to see in the book of Genesis, that providence is far from some blind force that God just lets loose on the planet to make things happen.
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That providence is the outworking of the being of a very personal, very real, and very faithful God.
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A God who is always at work, even when it feels like you can't see his hand doing stuff.
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And as we come to chapter 37 and we think about this subject of the brokenness of a family, we're going to get a front row seat in how providence works, even in the most broken of situations.
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We're going to watch a family that, to put it mildly, is extremely dysfunctional.
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But even in the midst of this broken family, God is at work in rather surprising ways.
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In fact, that kind of leads me to my big idea for this message. As you know, every message that I preach, I try to have one simple sentence that summarizes what we're going to hear.
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My big idea for this morning is this. That we're going to see from this passage that God's plan for his people won't be thwarted, even, or dare
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I say especially, by their own failures. That God's plan for his people won't be thwarted, even or especially, by their own failures.
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The challenge of this text is that it's such a familiar text.
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It's such a familiar story. And so I invite you to pray for me as I try and preach it, because I'm going to preach a familiar text in a maybe a slightly unfamiliar way,
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I trust. But I hope that as we do this, we'll see that God's plan for his people won't be thwarted, even or especially, by their own failures.
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To kind of show this to you, the rest of our time, I want to look at five shocking scenes of family dysfunction and how they show us
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God's hidden hand at work. Five shocking scenes of family dysfunction and how they show us
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God's hidden hand at, I keep using this word dysfunction, just how dysfunctional was this family?
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Well, you might get an idea when you see that there was, first of all, unchecked favoritism.
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There was unchecked favoritism. Look with me at verses one through four.
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Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. These are the family records of Jacob. At 70 years of age,
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Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father.
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Now, Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a long -sleeved robe for him.
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When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.
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So, we pick up the story right where we left it a few months ago in Genesis chapter 36. Jacob had been on the run from his brother, who he defrauded, and after almost 30 years of being on the run, he finally is back home in the land that God had promised.
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Verse two uses this language of family records. Actually, this phrase comes up 12 times in Genesis.
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This is the 12th and final time. We're finally going to see how Jacob's story comes to its conclusion.
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But it's interesting, Jacob's story doesn't come to conclusion through Jacob.
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It comes to conclusion through his sons, and especially our central character for this series,
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Joseph. So, we meet Joseph in verse two. He's 17, the text tells us, so he's young, and he has a role in the sort of family business.
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Remember that Jacob is a shepherd. He's a really good shepherd, and so he trains his sons to be shepherds as well.
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And if you had just the first two verses, this just seems kind of normal. Yeah, you know, he's one of the brothers, 12 total.
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He's one of the brothers, he's out working with the rest of his brothers, and it's no big deal. But I'll put it to you that even the way this scene is put together starts to show you that there are some problems.
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Because did you notice how there's a line drawn between Joseph, who's also called the young man, and his siblings?
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And the text explicitly says which ones? The sons of Zilpah and Bilhah, taking those
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Genesis chapter 30, that was the, Genesis 13 and 31, excuse me, the interesting story of how
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Jacob ends up with 12 sons, and a daughter, let's not forget her, but the story of his 12 sons.
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And some of those sons were the product of not his actual marriages, but his wives giving their slaves to him and saying, sleep with them and raise up children for me.
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These are not Joseph's full siblings, and that's already a problem. Not granted, it's kind of just stated, it's more of an implicit problem, it's more of an under the surface problem, but there's a more obvious problem in verse 2.
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Did you catch it? It says the young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father.
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One of the things, if you've grown up in church, there's an almost perfect picture that's painted of Joseph.
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If you've been around church for any length of time, Joseph is painted almost as this saintly figure.
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Allow me this morning to burst that bubble for just a moment, because these two words here, bad report, they actually tell us a lot about Joseph.
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If I may for a moment allow me to do a little bit of a fact check here. So this word,
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I'm going to be technical for just a moment, this phrase I should say, it's two words, this phrase doesn't just appear here, it actually appears in the
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Bible in a bunch of places. Now allow me to point out some of them to you. So Numbers chapter 13, you know the story, the nation of Israel is about to go into the land, they elect a spy from each of the 12 tribes, and they're told to go look at the land, scout it out, and tell us all about it.
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You know the story if you've read your Bible. They come back, and when they come back, the 12 spies, well, the report is kind of mixed.
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Actually, it's not kind of mixed, it's very mixed. Ten of them come back, and the text says in Numbers 13 .32
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that they brought a negative report about the land. Next report, same phrase.
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And if you read their report, the report is less than favorable, and in fact
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God takes them to task because it's a gross exaggeration. So that's one way this word is used.
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In a few places in the Bible, this word is actually translated gossip. Allow me to share just a few of them.
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Psalm 31 .13, the psalmist says, I have heard, well actually read this psalm next week, I have heard the gossip of many.
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Gossip, same word. Terror is on every side. When they conspired against me, they plotted to take my life.
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Jeremiah echoes that language in his prophecy, Jeremiah 20 .10, but I have heard the gossip of many people.
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Ezekiel uses the same language, Ezekiel 36 .3, where he says that this is what the Lord Yahweh says, because they have made you desolate, and have trampled you from every side, so that you became a possession for the rest of the nation, and an object of people's gossip.
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Same word. In fact, the same word is translated in Proverbs 10 .18, the one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool.
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Slander, same word. Oh, let's not leave that word bad out for just a moment.
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The word that's translated bad, jump all the way down to verse 32, we'll come back to it in a minute, but all the way down to verse 32, excuse me, verse 33, his father recognized it, it's my son's rope, he said, a vicious animal has devoured him.
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The word vicious is the word bad in verse 2. Can I put it to you that Joseph's report wasn't just a mere reporting of the facts, it was designed to slander and attack his brothers, because please notice that the text doesn't concern itself with the truthfulness of what he said.
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It really isn't the issue whether what he said is true or not, because the real issue that Moses so masterfully, yet subtly brings out, is that the motivation behind it was a problem.
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If I can put it to you like this, it's not the what of what Joseph said, it's the why. As one
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Bible teacher put it, quote, Joseph did not like his brothers, or perhaps he did not like being a servant to his brothers, and so he brought back a fabricated or exaggerated account to their father of their misdeeds.
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He played his own role in perpetuating the divisions in the household between the children of different mothers, a conflict highlighted by calling them the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah.
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Now let me be clear, I am not here to tarnish the name of Joseph. As you will see, Joseph grew and matured massively over the course of this narrative, but you know what the theological term for Joseph is in this moment?
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I'm in seminary, I have to learn lots of big fancy words. You know what the fancy term for this behavior from Joseph is?
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You know what Joseph is in this moment? He's a pipsqueak. As has happened over and over and over again in Genesis, there are no innocent parties, not even
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Joseph. Before I move on, can I pause and get practical for a moment?
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Joseph's being something of a gossip here, he's being a slanderer here. Have you ever considered, just for a moment, have you ever considered how
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God views gossip? Gossip can seem like a victimless crime, can't it?
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Like sharing your Netflix password, like agreeing to the terms and conditions when you know you didn't read them.
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You can laugh if you want to, you all know we've done it, I know I've done it this week. It might seem like a victimless crime, it's no big deal.
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Hey, if I'm really good, the person will never know why I did it. But for a moment, can
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I give you God's take on those who gossip and slander? Romans chapter 1 verse 28 to 32 says, and because they, those who rejected
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God, did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right.
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They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, malice.
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Let me pause there. We would all agree those are bad things, right? Those are things, nobody should be those things.
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Romans 1 .30, look what else Paul says, marks out those who hate God. He says they are gossips, slanderers,
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God haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.
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Although they know God's just sentence, that those who practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but even applaud the others who practice them.
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Did you notice in Romans 1 that God puts gossip on the same level as murder and being a
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God hater? We would all agree being a murderer and a God hater are not good things. They're things worthy of judgment.
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But God says being a gossip and a slanderer makes you worthy of judgment. Joseph is not being painted well here in Genesis 37.
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Coming back to Genesis 37, I have to wonder, how did Joseph know that this report would work? If he's trying to stir the pot, how did he know this would be effective?
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Well, you don't have to actually guess, just read verse 3. Now Israel loved
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Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age and he made a long -sleeved robe for him.
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Oh, Izzy, Izzy, Izzy, what are we doing here? Haven't we already seen favoritism play out in the narrative of Genesis already?
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If you haven't been here, Jacob's parents, Isaac and Rebecca, played favorites.
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Isaac liked Esau, the oldest because he was a hunter and would always bring him food. Rebecca liked
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Jacob because he was a homebody. If there was anybody who should have known the danger of favoritism, it should be
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Israel. It should be Jacob. That didn't end well for him and sadly, it appears that that pattern that just picked itself right up with the next generation.
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But before we get too harsh with Israel, before we say, Izzy, what are you doing? Who among us can say that we've never been guilty of showing favoritism?
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Who of us can say that we've never treated somebody differently for no good reason or worse for bad reasons?
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I mean, after all, Christians can do the favoritism thing too. That's why James chapter 2 verse 1, James has to say, my brothers and sisters, do not show favoritism as you hold on to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.
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My general rule of thumb in the Bible is when God has to tell Christians not to do something, it's because Christians might just do it.
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I'm sure we can make excuses for it. You know, I get on more with these people because we share this thing over here.
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I'm wary of so -and -so because, I don't know, I just don't, yeah, I just don't like him.
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I'm going to treat this person differently just because I can. It's a sad thing that Christians often forget that the
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God who treats all his children equally calls us to treat his people the same. And that seems to be a lesson that Israel had seemed to forget.
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Israel doesn't even try to hide this according to the text. He puts his favoritism, as it were, on bold display, and he does it in a kind of interesting way.
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So, again, verse three, Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a long -sleeved robe for him.
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Now, some of you are thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me put it this way.
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If I mention the name Joseph to you, what's the first thing you think of? Someone mentioned the musical from the 90s,
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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. You talk about Joseph, and we all talk about that coat.
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If you went to Sunday school where they had images, they most likely had an image of Joseph in a multi -colored coat.
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In fact, just to kind of take you behind the curtain, when I was planning this sermon series, I got the services of a friend to design some sermon art for me.
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My sermon art had Joseph in a multi -colored coat. As you can see, I did not go with that.
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After all, but Kofi, Kofi, Kofi, everyone and their mama knows that Joseph's coat was multi -colored. Or was it?
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I've become convinced, as I've spent the last few months just preparing for this series and digging into the book of Genesis, I'm convinced that this whole idea of Joseph had this multi -colored coat is one of those,
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I like to call them biblical Chinese whispers. You remember that game when we were kids,
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Chinese whispers? You know, someone starts with a line, they tell it to somebody else, they tell it to somebody else, but by the time it gets to the end of the line, it sounds nothing like how it started.
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You know, there are lots of those things if you've been around church for a while. What was the fruit that Eve ate in the garden?
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Says who? The text doesn't say that. It says ate a fruit.
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How many wise men went to go see Jesus? Says who? Says there were three gifts. Doesn't say there were three wise men.
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Actually wouldn't make a lot of sense for a delegation to travel that far and only be three people. But think about it, you've heard it so many times, it sounds nuts for me to even question it, doesn't it?
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Well, Kofi, why would you question this? This idea? Well, because the word actually doesn't mean that.
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That's why the CSB and actually a number of more modern translations don't use the word multi -colored or very colored or many colors, they don't use that phrase.
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In fact, in the ESV translation, this word that's translated here in the
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ESV is long -sleeved, New American standard, excuse me, should I get this right? In the
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ESV, in the New American standard, it's translated as multi -colored or very colored. Here it's long -sleeved in the CSB.
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This word appears only one more time in the Bible. If you take a note, 2
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Samuel chapter 13 verses 18 and 19. Now she, this is
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Tamar, the daughter of David, who is unfortunately sexually assaulted by her half -brother.
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It says, now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves.
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For thus were the virgin daughters of the king dressed. So her servant put her, so his, Amnon, the half -brother who sexually assaults her, puts her out and bolted the door after her.
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And Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she wore. Long robe is the same word that appears here in Genesis.
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Joseph did not get a multi -colored coat. Actually, if you want to know where that comes from, it comes from the
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Latin translation of the Bible, the Latin Vulgate. When they translated the word many -threaded, they translated that word as many -colored and it just stuck.
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So if you're like me who grew up in the King James Bible, it says many colors because that's what the
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Vulgate said. And it's just one of those things that has just stuck. But it's not actually what the word means.
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More than likely, this was a more fancy, ornate robe that was designed to show favor and to catch attention for the person who wore it.
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And it has that effect because look at verse 4. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and couldn't bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.
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This ornate robe that had been made for Joseph attracted unwanted attention.
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Israel has let a quiet storm of favoritism brew under his roof. Joseph knew it and could play the system.
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His other siblings knew it and resented it. And that attitude led to the second scene in our passage.
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I'm going to move a lot quicker through the rest of these. There's unchecked favoritism, but there's also unhelpful foolishness.
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There's unhelpful foolishness. Verses 5 through 11. It's as this context is developing that Joseph has two dreams.
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You see one in verse 7 and one in verse 9. They're two different dreams, but the two dreams have one very clear message.
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That Joseph would end up in a position where his family would one day be paying homage to him.
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Remember, this is the ancient Near East. This is unthinkable that the older would bow down to the younger.
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The dreams though aren't where the foolishness are. The foolishness comes up in how
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Joseph tells this. So did you catch how, you know, it's almost like he summons his siblings and says, hey, hey, hey, come here, come here, come here.
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Let me tell you about this dream I had. And he does this twice.
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And I want you to know it's something that there's an escalation as to how the brothers respond to what he's doing.
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So look at verse 4. Verse 4, after the coat is given to him, and they see this says that they hated him.
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But in verse 5, after he has the dream and tells them, it says that they hated him more.
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Jump down to verse 8. So after dream number 2, verse 8 says, so they hated him even more.
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Because of his dream and what he had said. I put it to you that Joseph, granted he's only 17.
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But Joseph is being unspeakably foolish here. He had to know that there was already a division that existed in the home.
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Saying this doesn't help. But despite his foolishness, it's interesting how
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Israel responds. Look at verse 11. Verse 11 says his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
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Actually, we're kind of summarizing because I don't want to spend too long. But you have to hand it to Israel here.
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Okay, his favoritism really isn't helping matters. But how he handles this particular incident is not that bad.
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He rightly interprets what the meaning of the dream is. He does try to, in some way, get to the bottom of why
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Joseph is saying it. And more important, most importantly of all, the text is he keeps the matter in mind.
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He doesn't just dismiss it. I have to think that part of why he doesn't just dismiss it is because he thinks back to when his father blessed him.
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Back in chapter 27, if I'll read to you Genesis 27 -29, may people serve you and nations bow in worship to you.
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Be master over your relatives. May your mother's sons bow in worship to you.
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No doubt, Jacob has to be thinking, is he the one the covenant promises are going to land on?
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I mean, after all, Jacob technically wasn't supposed to be the one and they landed on him. Granted, he stole them, but they landed on him.
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I mean, Joseph is the second youngest. Maybe it's him. He's not going to get an answer to that question immediately.
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We'll see as the story unfolds. He doesn't get an answer now. For now though, Jacob's unchecked favoritism opened the door to unhelpful foolishness from Jacob.
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It also sets the stage for seed number three, unflinching violence. Unflinching violence.
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Because of how long this section is, I'm just going to summarize as we go. Some time passes and we pick it up in verse 12 and where we started is where we are now.
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They're in the field. They're working again. The brothers had gone to Shechem. Shechem's about 50 -odd miles.
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Verse 13 says, Israel said to Joseph, your brothers, you know, are posturing the flocks at Shechem. Get ready.
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I am sending you to them. And Joseph says, I'm ready. Then Israel said to him, go and see how your brothers and the flocks are doing and bring word back to me.
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Israel knows I can trust Joseph to come back. He's a tattletale.
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He'll more than share everything. So he sent him from the
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Hebron Valley and he went to Shechem, which is a journey of about 50 miles, give or take. It's interesting that as this passage unfolds,
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Jacob, not Jacob, excuse me, Joseph seems to be lost when he goes and he can't find them. And the text kind of curiously,
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I won't spend long on this, but the text says simply just a man appears and gives him the location of the brothers.
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I'll simply note this, that there are some traditions that try to argue that this man is not any ordinary man, because you've heard this language already.
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Remember when Jacob went wrestling with a man who appeared out of nowhere? We don't know that for certain, but it is kind of interesting.
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Whoever the man is, he points Joseph in the right direction. They're in this place called Dothan. Dothan's another 15 miles.
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This is a long journey. It's about 65 miles total. You think, oh great, he's been traveling all this way.
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It's going to be a nice family reunion. Verse 18. Verse 18. They saw him in the distance and before he had reached them, they plotted to kill him.
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They said to one another, oh look, here comes that dream expert, literally the master of dreams.
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So now come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of the pits. We can say that a vicious animal, that same word that was used for bad, a vicious animal ate him.
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Then we'll see what becomes of his dreams. This language of throwing him into a pit, it's much more than just like putting him somewhere.
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It's the word that was used in the Hebrew for throwing someone into a grave. They're essentially going to throw him somewhere and leave him to die.
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Bear in mind, this is in the desert. This would be a slow and torturous death. What could possibly lead to such unspeakable evil from these brothers?
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Well, they're explicit. Verse 19 and verse 20. His dreams fostered this kind of hatred.
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The idea that Joseph was going to rule over them. It was practically disgusting to them.
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It's almost as though Joseph's inability to keep his mouth shut was now about to cost him his very life.
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Actually, someone has a conscience in this. There's Reuben, who is the oldest. Reuben, verse 21, when he heard this, he tried to save him from them.
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He said, let's not take his life. Reuben also said, don't shed blood, throw him into this pit in the wilderness, but don't lay a hand on him, intending to rescue him from them and return him to his father.
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Now, bear in mind, all of this is happening. Joseph hasn't actually arrived. They see him coming. It's all talk until we get to verse 23.
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When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped off Joseph's robe, the long sleeved robe that he had on.
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Then they took him and threw him into the pit. The pit was empty without water.
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The symbol of Israel's excessive favor stripped from him. And now he's consigned to his death.
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I use the word unflinching in this heading, because look at verse 25. They do this in verse 25.
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They sat down to eat a meal. No pain of conscience. Reuben, maybe.
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But generally, no pain of conscience, no sense of guilt. It's almost as though they have this thought to themselves. Joseph talked too dang much.
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And this is what he gets. Their rage led them to act and not feel a single thing.
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I mean, sinful anger would do that. James 1 .20. Human anger doesn't accomplish God's righteousness.
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In this case, human anger has left the brothers. Think about this. They now have a brother who can't go home.
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Even if they don't kill him, think about this. If he wasn't telling before, he is now.
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Dad, you will not believe what happened today. Either way, they're done for.
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So now they have a brother who can't go home, and a situation they can't fix. Cooler heads prevail, and they decide not to kill their brother.
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But now they have to cover their tracks, and they do so with an act of sin. Number four, unthinkable deception.
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Unthinkable deception. I have to argue that from this point in verse 26, that at this point, it's kind of obvious that they haven't thought this through.
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I mean, to use our modern expression, they saw red, and now here they were. It's interesting that they don't really listen to Reuben, who's the oldest.
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Kind of tells you that Reuben is already losing respect in his father's home. But Judah emerges as the leader.
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So verse 26, Judah said to his brothers, what do we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?
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Come on, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay a hand on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh. Okay, that's nice,
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I guess. And his brothers agreed. When Midianite traders passed by,
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Midianites and Ishmaelites here are interchangeable. Midianites is where they live. Ishmaelites are who they are ethnically.
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When Midianite traders passed by verse 28, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him for 20 pieces of silver to the
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Ishmaelites, who took Joseph to Egypt. On the surface, this might seem like a better option.
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But actually, this was a spectacularly stupid option. Because in the world of the ancient
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Near East, selling someone into unwilling slavery was punishable by death. Not that they should have, let's be clear.
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But if they were really going to do this, they might as well have killed him. The results are going to be the same. Rather than deal with Joseph, they sell him for 20 pieces of silver was kind of the standard price.
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There's a bit of an undertone to that. Think you're special, huh? Okay. I'm going to sell you a bargain basement prices.
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You might think, daddy might think you're special, but to us, you are regular shmegular. You might think, wait a minute, didn't
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Reuben have this plan to try and rescue him? Seems like for some reason, he went away and came back.
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Because it says verse 20, then when Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to his brother and said, the boy is gone.
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What am I going to do? If you remember Reuben's already in trouble with his dad, because think back to chapter 30, what did
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Reuben do? Slept with his father's concubine. And the text says that Jacob knew about it.
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He didn't say anything, but he remembered I put it to you. Reuben's already on thin ice.
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He sees this and he's like, Oh, I am toast. What they need is a plan where they could all get away with this.
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So they come up with on verse 31. So they took Joseph's robe, slaughtered a male goat and dipped the robe in its blood.
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They sent the long sleeve robe to their father and said, we found this, examine it. Is this, is it your son's robe or not?
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Again, it seems kind of simple, but you got to dig underneath the surface a little bit here. First of all, did you catch that a goat is the medium that they use to deceive?
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Haven't we seen this already in this story? Didn't Jacob use the hair of a goat to deceive his father?
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Oh, by the way, I think Moses wants you to clue those two things together because the word for examine it in verse 32, it's the same word for when
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Isaac didn't recognize Jacob, the deceiver is being deceived in ways that are painfully familiar.
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I mean, you've got to think about this for a moment. Jacob is a master shepherd. He's an expert shepherd. He's also a master scavenger.
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It takes a lot to pull the wool over someone's eyes like that, but somehow they pull it off.
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Doesn't your heart just break for Israel when you read verse 35? Verse 35, all his sons tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.
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No, he said, I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning. And his father wept for him.
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Sheol was the place of the dead, is where the dead, both the righteous and the unrighteous in the Hebrew conception, went awaiting the final resurrection.
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He essentially says, I will mourn this loss until the day I go to join him where the dead go.
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Silly favoritism or not, as someone, I'm speaking personally here, who watched his own parents mourn the loss of a child.
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My heart breaks for Israel in this moment. This is horrible.
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Regardless of his bad treatment of his children, he did not deserve this. The brothers have pulled off an act of unthinkable deception against their own father.
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Joseph is now off to a strange land. Jacob is beside himself with grief. The brothers will have to make their peace with this and just live with this on their conscience till the day they die.
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This is bad. But did you catch it?
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Did you catch it? Who so far has been absent from the events of today?
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Who have we not mentioned once in this? Actually, it's a trick question because God has been here all along.
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God has been here all along working with number five, unmistakable providence.
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Verse 36 might seem like a throwaway line. So verse 36, meanwhile, the
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Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards.
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Why does Moses end this story here? Why didn't he just end it with Israel's grief? We already know he went to Egypt because earlier on in the chapter it says, they sold him to traitors who were going to Egypt.
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We already know this. Why does he feel the need to tell us this again? Why do we need to know that Joseph, one of Abraham's offspring, is going to Egypt as a slave to a land that's not his, didn't we read something about that to start this message?
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I'll read it again. Then Yahweh said to Abraham, Genesis 15, 13, know this for certain, your offspring will be resident aliens for 400 years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed.
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That can't happen if Joseph doesn't get there. So even in the midst of the brokenness of this family,
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God's providence is at work and it's unmistakable. Just like how
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God used the hatred of another group of brothers against one of their own, against the son who was beloved of his father.
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This son did tell the truth about his brothers without any sin or guile.
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Yes, he had a favored position, not because of sinful favoritism, but because he was loved from before the foundation of the world.
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For his witness, which was a true witness, unlike Joseph's, his brothers hated him to the point of death.
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Unlike Joseph, they didn't fake his death. They actually killed him.
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But through that sinful act on their part, let me just give you the spoiler up front.
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This is going to end up in the salvation of Israel and his family, temporally speaking. But through a sinful act that was done to this greater brother, not just a single family was saved, but millions would be saved.
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The love of the gospel is all over the Bible if you just know where to look for it. And even in this story, seeds are being sown that will come to fruition much later on.
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Because if you haven't guessed it, that favored son I'm talking about is our Lord Jesus. Bible says that John chapter one, he came to his own and his own did not receive him.
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But here's the good news for you this morning. John goes on and says, but to those who did receive him, he gave the power to become sons and daughters of God to as many who has believed on his name.
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So if you're here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus, he went through all of that so that you could come to know him.
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And if you come speak to me, speak to any of us who are here, we'd love to tell you more about the good news of salvation in Jesus.
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And father, we thank you for the fact that even in the brokenness of a highly dysfunctional family, you were still at work.
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Your glorious purpose was being worked out, being worked out in ways that I don't think any of the characters in this story would have even realized in the moment.
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Father help us that we would see your hand of providence at work, even in the situations and the challenges and even the moments of life where we are the ones who have messed up.
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Help us to recognize that you are doing something even in those times.
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Father I pray for our ongoing study through the life of Joseph. There's still so much for us to see, so much for us to learn, so much for us to be challenged by.
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Father help us, help us that we would see your hidden hand at work and that we would ultimately trust in that hand.