The Passion of Joseph

The Providence of God in Joseph’s Betrayal

Well, this morning we look to complete chapter 37, and then next week we'll begin in interlude with Judah before we continue on with the providence of God in the life of Joseph. And similar to last week, we want to consider first of all the text itself, the details as they pertain to Joseph, but then secondly, we want to consider the text as it pertains typologically to the Lord Jesus, the greater Joseph, yet to come, the true promised seed of Abraham that would bring the blessings of God's covenant to His people indeed, that they would have a king and dwell with God through His chosen seed in a land, that they might dwell with Him there.

And then lastly, we want to consider how these things could apply to us. So that's really what we did last week. We seek to do that again in Genesis 37, focusing on v. 21 -35. Where we left off last week was with the conspiracy among Joseph's brothers to kill him.

We have the jealousy bursting out from the seams beginning in v. 18, when they saw him afar off, that is, even before they could see him face to face, before they even saw the whites of his eyes, they were seething in jealousy and rage against him.

In v. 19, they said to one another, come, let us kill him and cast him into some pit. And then, we'll say, some wild beast has devoured him. We shall see what will become of his dreams. This morning, we actually come to the plot's fulfillment.

No longer is it a conspiracy. Now it's an act. Now it's a deed done. We consider this morning the passion of Joseph. The passion of Joseph, of course, leads us typologically to the passion of Jesus. And that's perhaps a familiar term to us, thanks to Mel Gibson, if not to Catholic upbringing among us.

But the word passion, which we often use to describe an intense feeling or an intense emotion, the word passion, when it's in reference to Jesus, simply comes from the Latin passus, which means to suffer.

It actually comes from patior, but passus is the noun form, to suffer. And it comes also from the Apostles' Creed. Jesus suffered, passus, sub pontio pilatus, suffered under Pontius Pilate. And so when we talk about the passion of Jesus, we're talking about the suffering of Jesus.

Now, more to the point, we're talking about the suffering related to the circumstances surrounding the crucifixion. His torturing, the mockery and humiliation, and his death. But truly, he was, from the get-go, a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief.

In that sense, the passion of Jesus encompasses his entire ministry. But for our purposes, when we look at the passion of Joseph, I think we'll be brought to see the passion of Jesus, and therefore, in seed form here in Genesis 37, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Reuben’s Attempt to Spare Joseph

Let's begin in v. 21. Reuben heard it, and he delivered Him out of their hands, and said, let us not kill Him. They were ready to do it right then. Reuben stops them, and he says, let us not kill Him.

This is not so much a suggestion as a command, and he has authority to command this as the eldest brother. He is the leader among these brothers. Reuben says to them, shed no blood, but cast Him instead into this pit.

Which is in the wilderness.

Don't lay a hand on Him, that He might deliver Him out of their hands and bring Him back to His Father. So Reuben has this rescue plot. Now, what's driving Reuben? I think we have the answer to that a few verses later.

We couldn't say that Reuben is the only brother that actually has some affection for Joseph. Oh, you guys are always so hard on him. Come on, let's give him a break. He's our young brother. Young brothers can be obnoxious.

We can't say that of Reuben. I think what's driving him is a concern for the relationship he's already damaged with Jacob. He had fallen out of favor with Jacob after the whole Bilhah ordeal, and he feels that the responsibility of Joseph being on his shoulders, that that would completely break apart his relationship with his father.

He could not afford to bear the blame. He could not afford to bear the heat of Jacob's vengeance, as it were, upon him. And as the eldest, he would be responsible for whatever happened to Joseph. And so he seeks to deliver Joseph.

Not out of love for Joseph, so much out of a desire to repair this relationship with Jacob. We'll see that again in Genesis 42. Reuben will again put himself in this position of sacrifice. The command to shed no blood is in the second person plural.

So the idea is you all shed no blood. He's almost distancing himself from this desire. Don't shed his blood, you guys. I'm not going to do that. You don't do it either. And he seems to have in view here the law of God that I think is written on men's hearts, but it's exemplified in the Noahide Covenant in Genesis 9 -6, where we have the forbidding of the shedding of man's blood.

He who sheds the blood of man, his blood must be shed, for man is made in the image of God. And Reuben seems to have heard and understood, and now abides by that command. But it came to pass when Joseph had come to his brothers that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him.

Now that's significant as we move toward the end of this chapter because it's the identifying fabric that leads Jacob to mourn what he assumes is the inevitable loss of his son. But it's also significant for the way that Moses links together fabric and redemption.

That's all I'll say about it, but when we get to chapter 43, we'll see some beautiful ways that the idea of covering and uncovering and the fabric of reconciliation is utilized. They took him. They cast him into a pit.

And we have a description of the pit. The pit was empty. There was no water in it. Now, taking a step back here to summarize, we have the jealous brothers.

Killing,.

Notice my fingers, killing the righteous brother. Okay, we're going to talk about the metaphorical death of the pit in a moment, but we have, for summary's sake, the jealous brothers killing the righteous brothers.

So here again, thematically, we're brought back to Cain and Abel. This is again part of the way that the themes of Genesis reverberate throughout the narrative cycles. We have a comparison, I think, of that fratricidal rage of Cain against righteous Abel mirrored now in the fratricidal rage of the jealous brothers against Joseph.

Robert Gonzales,.

Who wrote an excellent study called Where Sin Abounds. It's on the spread of sin in the patriarchal narratives.

He says,.

In both cases, the unrighteous despised the righteous because God favored the latter. As Cain's anger and hatred intensified to the point of plotting murder, remember, you know, sin is at your door. It's crouching there.

You must rule over it. And yet he couldn't resist that rage. So the hatred of Joseph's brothers mounts until it results in this conspiracy. Cain actually murders Abel. Joseph's brothers stop short of murder and sell him into slavery, and yet their deeds amount to a virtual murder.

Samuel Amadi. He has a book coming out in another month or so, which is a revision of his dissertation, which I've been reading now for several weeks. He brings out this parallel with Cain and Abel also, noting how frequent we have here in Genesis 37 use of the term brother and also imagery of blood.

It's one of the ways that we're keyed in to this parallel.

He says, These words,.

These thematic parallels, weave the narrative threads of Genesis 37 to Cain and Abel with the conflict between Joseph.

And his brothers.

Becoming the climactic episode of sibling rivalry. See, major theme in Genesis, isn't it? Sibling rivalry. The brothers recapitulate Cain's fratricide in their plot to murder Joseph, while Joseph undergoes metaphorical death in the pit.

Now this is very significant, and we're not saying he dies metaphorically so that we can just start talking about Jesus. We're saying to the ancient Near Eastern reader of Genesis 37 to be cast in the pit is to die as it were.

So already embedded within the text is the death of the righteous son Joseph. That's hammered home if you were reading Genesis for the first time, because the narrative all of a sudden has a disjunctive clause and we move on to Judah.

And so the reader's going, what happened to Joseph? He's dragged away off into Egypt. He's left in Potiphar's houses. Is that the last we'll hear of him? To remove him from the narrative is another way of sort of having a metaphorical death.

Joseph undergoes metaphorical death in the pit. I'll give you some examples. In Psalm 30, we have this idea held together. Oh Lord, you brought my soul up from the grave. Translation could be Sheol, the place where the disembodied dead gather.

Oh Lord, you brought my soul up from the grave. Significant, up from the grave. Now here's the parallel statement. You have kept me alive so that I shall not go down into the pit. So notice what's being said.

First of all, the grave or Sheol is parallel to the pit. So the pit equals the grave. And the opposite of that is being kept alive. You kept me alive. You did not allow me to go into the pit. So notice how the pit in an ancient Near Eastern conception has the connotations of death or of the grave.

We find this throughout the Psalms. We find this in Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 26, Psalm 28. There's all sorts of places where the same idea is given to us. The pit or sinking beneath the earth is a way of dying.

Another, and this is ironic for the story of Joseph, another way of metaphorically dying is being cast into prison. Prisons, dungeons, were often built under the earth, and so a prisoner experienced, as it were,.

A death.

And that is significant because Joseph is going to end up again beneath the earth in the place of death in a prison of Pharaoh. The scene is portrayed for us.

As Joseph being cast by.

His jealous brothers.

Into his death.

And it's portrayed with Joseph being almost entirely.

Passive.

We have some details that come later as I'll share in a moment.

But here,.

As the brothers lay hold of him, as they clutch those beautiful, colored threads of that garment and they tear it.

From him,.

And as they all clamor after him, their hands bruising, squeezing, thrusting him, perhaps dragging him along toward the mouth of the pit, and they cast him, as it were, into death. Joseph is entirely.

Passive.

We don't read of him ducking and rolling and trying to run for it. We don't read of him pleading and bargaining and saying what he can do for them, what he's willing to do, anything to be spared. As far as the text is concerned here, we have none of that.

We could almost say here, in Genesis 37, that Joseph submits to being cast to the grave. He does not attempt to run from this. He simply submits to being cast to the grave. Stripped of his tunic. Cast into a pit where there's no means of sustenance.

He's not going to last more than three days. There's no water.

In the pit. And what do his brothers.

Do? Verse 25. They sit down to eat. And they sat down to eat a meal.

How callous. How cold-hearted.

They gather around and spread a blanket and open up their lunch boxes. And their brother they've just cast into a pit.

To die. Did they say a.

Prayer before they ate?

Disconnected.

Is their mind and their soul and their heart from what they've just done? How could you eat at a time like this? It shows the cruelty, the hatred.

Of these brothers.

Now again, I've just said, Joseph and I think this is significant for the way it points us to the Gospel. Joseph is entirely passive. And so the way he's presented in Genesis 37 is that he submits to the suffering.

And I think that's important to connect Genesis 37 to the Gospel, but we are given some details later on through the mouth of Reuben of what's taking place while they're eating this meal together as brothers.

Reuben in Genesis 42.

Says,.

We're truly guilty concerning our brother. We saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us and we would not hear. Therefore, this distress comes upon us. And so the guilt and the conviction of that moment has finally settled upon their conscience.

You get the idea that.

It hasn't been far from their memory, perhaps from their night terrors, the sound of that pleading. And it's been a matter of anguish for them. That at the time, they're entirely.

Hardened too.

We heard as we were eating and sharing bowls and passing dishes and commenting on how wonderful that was seasoned and how excellent the cheeseburgers were. We heard him. He was pleading.

With us.

The bloody, bruised, righteous brother calling out, pleading. Amos seems to have this in mind when he calls judgment upon Zion really in the text. He calls judgment upon Israel. Remember, this is Israel.

Sans-Joseph. These are the patriarchs of Israel. And Israel hath cast the righteous son, the beloved son of the Father, toward his death, and they callously eat, almost proud of themselves. And this is what the prophet Amos says.

Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, who cause the seed of violence to come near, who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on couches, eat lambs from the flock. Probably what they were doing. Calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, and invent for yourselves instruments like David, who drink from wine bowls, and anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.

The idea there.

Amos is saying, you know, woe to you wealthy, unafflicted in life. This is really Amos taking up almost a James-like warning. Meanwhile, for the innocent, the righteous that are cast down, you're not grieved at all.

You have no thought, no concern for their affliction. Woe to you, you're putting off that day of doom, and part of it is you're living in luxury. You're not grieving for the affliction of Joseph. So that's the context of Amos, but it's also embedded within it this idea.

You have not considered the story here. You have not read Genesis carefully enough, Israel.

Who are you more like?

The righteous Joseph, or the cruel, callous brothers that cast him to his death? D .G. Barnhouse, the great preacher at Tenth Press a few generations ago, he said, a physicist could compute the exact time it would take for Joseph's cries to go 25 yards to the eardrums of his brothers.

But it took 22 years for those cries to go from their eardrums.

To their heart. And I can't.

Help. But think, is that not analogous to how the Gospel is heard still today? The word of the Gospel goes out like Joseph's cries, pleading,.

Persuading, exhorting, calling,.

And the callous, hardened hearts of sinners refuse to hear it. It falls upon deaf ears with stony hearts, and until the Lord takes out that heart of stone and makes a heart of flesh, those ears will not hear those pleas.

But if the Lord by His Spirit gives the heart of flesh and unstops those ears and makes the conscience tender to the living Word. We sang yesterday around the fire.

A song,.

Bless Me to Tie That Bind, written by John Fawcett, one of the great Baptist preachers of his generation, who actually spent his entire ministry, 50 plus years, in a very small, obscure church. I was reading a little bit about this.

It was, I wouldn't even say blue-collar. It was less than blue-collar. It was almost caveman-like, and the Anglicans didn't want to touch it. Like, we're not putting a parish with these animals. The Baptists were like, hey, we've got to do it.

We've got to do it. And John Fawcett was called to preach there. He had been an orphan by the time he was a teenager. His parents died, and so he was orphaned. He was apprenticed as a tailor, and he joined a Baptist church after he was converted under the preaching of Whitefield at the age of 16.

And he said in his diary, I'll never forget till the day I die the sermon that I heard from John 3 -14 when Whitefield preached, the Son of Man must.

Be lifted up.

So why does he leave the rather lucrative career of being a tailor and go to these rough-necked hooligans out in Staffordshire where no man dare went, but the Baptists were willing to plant a church there, because the Son of Man must be lifted up.

And why did he turn down? He did supply for John Gill in London. He hobnobbed with some of the brightest lights of his day. But when they called him, when he had opportunity to apply there, he turned them down.

Why? Because the Son of Man must be lifted up. That is what happens when God removes the scales from the eyes, when He unstops the ears, when He casts out the stony heart, when the pleas of the Son of God through the call of the Gospel are heard and responded to in.

Faith. And so remember.

This meal. Again, it's going to take some time for us to get to Genesis 43, but remember this meal, because this is the last time as far as the text is concerned that we have the brothers gathered to eat a meal.

But they're gathered at the table eating this meal together, and the righteous one is cast out from them. They've cast him into the grave. And the next time they share a meal together, they'll be gathered together around the table, and the one who they cast into the grave will be at the head of the table as Lord over them.

All. One of the major themes.

In Genesis is the providence of God. We've seen that theme already in many ways, but in Joseph, this becomes one of the major themes. And so the providence of God is now in view as Joseph is bleeding out, dehydrated in the grave, in the pit.

We read, then they lifted their eyes and looked. And so this is the kind of language of providence they just happened to notice. And you'll notice this again and again throughout the story of Joseph. The brothers notice a company of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels bearing spices, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry them down to Egypt.

So Judah said to his brothers, what prophet is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites. Let not our hand be upon him. He is our brother.

And our flesh.

And his brothers listened. We have the providence of God bringing now Joseph to Egypt another step closer in a way that no one can understand to Joseph fulfilling the dreams that God had given him at the beginning of this chapter.

Reuben’s Return and the Deception of Jacob

Reuben returns to the pit and the narrative almost comes to his point of view. You can picture him, he finally gets away from that meal. Maybe the whole time he's rather anxious. He's trying to keep his brothers at bay, maybe distracted, and when that opportune moment comes he goes to the pit to try to restore Joseph, drag him out, bring him back safely to Jacob.

But when he returns to the pit indeed we read, that could be translated behold, Joseph was not in the pit. The idea is like he's absolutely stunned. And what does he do? He does what Jacob will do when he finds out that Joseph is gone.

He tears his clothes. There's something so evocative about that act, isn't it? The rending.

Of garments. Does that sound.

Familiar? Reuben was there when they tore the clothes off of Joseph, the righteous brother. And when he goes there to find the one that he was seeking to spare, he's not there and he tears his own clothes.

And he goes to his brothers, aware now of what has happened, and he says, glad is no more. And I, where shall I go? That was his main concern. How can I go back to my father? What am I going to do? What am I going to say?

This is going to be on my head, on my neck. What can I do? I'm going to be cast out of the household forever. I'm going to have to go into exile. I'm going to be, for all intents and purposes, an orphan.

We look.

At Reuben.

And we can be thankful that whether he had the right motives or not, he was trying to spare Joseph. It would have been better if he had been a stronger leader. It would have been better if when that plot came to his ears, he put Joseph behind his back and he said, if you touch him, you'll have to touch me.

You'll have to kill me. I will not let you lay a hand against him.

But he doesn't do that.

He sides with Joseph.

Secretly,.

But then he's so concerned about this relationship to his father that he keeps silence about his guilt for 22 years. He dishonors his father for 22 years. He lives with a stain on his conscience for 22 years.

And the brothers all have a way.

Out.

They plan a deception. Verse 31, they take Joseph's tunic, they kill a kid of the goats, dip the tunic in the blood, and they sent that tunic ahead, the tunic of many colors. Again, that's emphatic for us.

And they brought it to their father and said, look, we found this. Do you know whether or not it's your son's? They know. They know that Jacob knows. It's ridiculous. This is the thing that made them great.

This was the symbol of his authority, of his destiny to rule over them. Do you know if this happened to belong to him? This unique coat that only he had? The one that made us grimace and wince whenever we saw it?

And Jacob recognized it and said, it is my son's tunic. A wild beast has devoured him. It doesn't come across well in the English. Hebrew sometimes gets you in that character and it breaks apart. It would literally be like,.

The tunic, it is my son's, torn, torn from.

Wild beasts. It's just like.

Jumbled words. He's in a panic. He assumes, they don't have to spell it out to him, he assumes if this is his tunic and it's torn to pieces, a wild animal tore him to shreds. The serpent of the garden came, tore the seed.

To shreds. Notice that.

Joseph's brothers conspire to deceive Israel. Just like Israel had conspired to deceive Isaac. They take some goats in order to deceive him, just as Rebecca helped Jacob get some goats to deceive the father.

They planted a forgery. And so the famous deceiver, the famous twister is himself deceived. Notice that they have to use goats as an animal, a sacrifice really for their own evil plan. It's their evil that causes them to lay hold of the goat.

It's their evil that dips the garment in the blood of the goat, and this is reminiscent of the Passover. The dipping into the sacrificial.

Blood, and Jacob.

Tears his clothes. He had buried his beloved wife not far from Bethlehem, but now that precious.

Boy,.

The firstborn of his beloved Rachel, as far as he knows is dead, and he tears his clothes, and he puts on sackcloth. He ties it around his waist, and he mourns day after day.

After day.

You know, I was reading Calvin's commentary on this point, and several probably following Calvin on this, they use this as a springboard to say there is a danger in excessive grief. He assumed the worst and walked according to that, and his grief, you know, should have been turned toward hope, and that hope is actually realized in the conclusion.

He sees his son yet lives, and though that may not be our conclusion for loved ones lost in this life, yet we have that same hope because of the resurrection of our Savior. But Calvin, living in a time in the 16th century surrounded by plague and death, life expectancy that was always very short and life was very hard, and he warns, I think as a good minister in his day, he warns against excessive grief.

He says you need to have hope, and I want to be sympathetic to his time in the context of his ministry, but for our purposes in our time, though there is certainly something to be said about excessive grief, I think the tone of the text says we don't understand grief well enough.

We've lost something, something.

Of the sanctity.

And the dignity.

Of human life, and our grief ought to be far more excessive.

Than it is. I wish.

Our culture had something.

Like sackcloth,.

A visible.

Manifestation of saying, I can't even maintain myself, I can't look after my meals or my appearance, I am entirely disheveled, not just outwardly, but inwardly, my soul is at pain, and I cannot rise, I cannot lay down, I am in grief, and I cannot be comforted.

The church has lost its ability to grieve well, and I think with it we've lost something of the dignity and the gravity and the beauty of human life, and therefore of the gospel of salvation, which makes the resurrection hope so bright, so glorious, so luminous.

We can't rejoice well if we don't grieve well, is what I'm saying. And so I have to depart from our beloved Calvin, though I would say in his time he was doing what was appropriate. Just look at the details.

Jacob tears his clothes, he puts on sackcloth, he grieves day after day, people come, they send hallmark cards, they bring by soup and cupcakes, and he refuses to be comforted, and all he keeps saying is, I'm going to go down to the grave mourning for my son.

Thus.

His father wept for him. Well this all brings us to consider the passion of Jesus.

If that's.

The passion of Joseph, this metaphorical death in the pit, all of this is keyed for us to consider the passion of Jesus. These jealous brothers, they conspire against their brother, their own flesh and blood.

When we come to the passion of Jesus, we see this truth resounding. This is ultimately presenting to us the Gospel of Jesus, the sufferings that He experienced as our brother and our flesh.

This was.

Genesis 37. This was Joseph's Gethsemane. This was Joseph's Calvary. He was stripped of his clothes as Jesus in Mark 15 was brought before the guard of the Roman prefect, and they stripped his.

Clothes.

Part of the humiliation. The eternally blessed Son of God seeking to cover Himself and hold together something of His dignity while they flay and.

Spit and scorn.

Sold for pieces of.

Silver, bound by a.

Plot which is covered up, just as the Jews sought to cover up their plot in Matthew 27. His body brought up out of the pit, as it were, brought up out of the grave. His blood, the blood.

Of the scapegoat, really,.

Being brought and presented.

To the Father. We see.

The glory of Christ in the passion of Joseph, knowing Joseph was entirely subject to this as something unbeknown to Him, and yet Christ endured this willingly. And so we see His patience, His humility.

We see the glory of the suffering servant willingly subjecting Himself to the scorn and the torture and the evil of the very men He came.

To save. And we ought to.

Always have awe. We don't read it as.

Reuben distanced.

From this. We say with the hymn, died He for me who caused His pain? For me who Him to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be?

How can it be that.

Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? Not.

Me in the abstract.

Not me going through life and not realizing I needed to actually adopt the system of Christianity. No, no. Me who pursued Him to death, me who joined in the spitting, in the mocking, who bound Him to the cross, who callously ate, and went about being merry and eating and drinking while He suffered.

We see the Son in our flesh. Isn't that just amazing?

In verse 27, Judah's words,.

Let not our hand be upon Him. He is our brother, our flesh. This is a reminder that the Son comes in our flesh as our brother. He takes humanity to His divinity. Philippians 2. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point.

Of death. The early church,.

Of course, was always having to sort out some of these issues about the identity of Jesus, and we find these heresies reverberating throughout church history. They're still with us today. The question of how can we understand the divinity and the humanity of Jesus.

There was a constant seesaw in those early centuries of heresy. On the one hand, denying that Jesus was truly preexistent with the Father, fully divine, co-equal, co-eternal with the Father as the eternally begotten Son.

That was on the one hand. On the other hand, there was a denial that Jesus was fully human, made like unto us in every respect, except without sin. So on the one hand, we have an ancient heresy like that taught by an elder named Apollinaris.

Takes its name from it, Apollinarianism. What did as a man mean to Apollinarians? Well, Jesus possessed all the parts of a human body. Every limb, all the organs, even the brain.

But, He didn't.

Have a human soul. He didn't have a human spirit. You know, really, the only part of Him that was divine was His mind. Everything else was human, but His mind was divine.

His body was inhabited.

By this divine mind, this divine Word of God. But Scripture rejects this entirely. Jesus lacked.

Nothing.

That we possess, except our sins. The Cappadocian Fathers, in response to this heresy, among others, have a wonderful maxim. This is Gregory of Nazianzus. Whatever is not assumed, is not redeemed. If Jesus did not assume our humanity in its entirety, then He cannot redeem our humanity in its.

Entirety. So all that.

Is human now belongs to Him, except sin. A human mind, human emotions, human affections, a human will, a human body. He is our brother. He is our.

Flesh. And we see the.

Son humiliated. As we approach the story of Joseph, we're really approaching the story of the humiliation, and then later, the exaltation of the beloved Son. And in this way, it reverberates throughout the whole Bible.

This is the story of the beloved Son, who first had to be humiliated before He was exalted. Samuel Amadi in his wonderful study writes,. Moses, writing Genesis, intertwines the theme of suffering and the theme of blessing, right?

Covenantal blessing. Remember, the key covenantal blessings of Genesis are the promise of a king, the promise of kingship, the promise of a seed, and the promise of a land. Kingship, seed, and land. And yet kingship, seed, and land, which are there from God's created purpose, are necessarily tied to God's covenantal blessing, be fruitful and multiply as co-regent with Me, as that who exercises dominion over what I have made, kingship, multiply, seed, take dominion over the land, and yet because of the fall, a new way is introduced.

The covenant blessings will now come through suffering. Because the mystery of the Gospel, though still veiled at this point, is beginning to unravel, the way that the curse of the fall will be undone, the way that the head of the serpent will be.