The Passion of Joseph

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 37:21-35

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Well, this morning we look to complete chapter 37 and then next week we'll begin an interlude with Judah before we continue on with the providence of God in the life of Joseph.
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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
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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.
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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 verses 21 -35.
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Where we left off last week was with the conspiracy among Joseph's brothers to kill him.
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We have the jealousy bursting out from the seams beginning in verse 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.
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Verse 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.
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We shall see what will become of his dreams. This morning we actually come to the plot's fulfillment.
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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.
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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
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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
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Apostles' Creed. Jesus suffered, passus, sub pontio pilatus, suffered under Pontius Pilate.
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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.
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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
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Lord Jesus Christ. Let's begin in verse 21. Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands, and said, let us not kill him.
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They were ready to do it right then. Reuben stops them, and he says, let us not kill him.
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This is not so much a suggestion as a command, and he has authority to command this as the eldest brother.
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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.
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Don't lay a hand on him, that he might deliver him, this is sort of parenthetical, out of their hands, and bring him back to his father.
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So Reuben has this rescue plot. Now, what's driving Reuben? I think we have the answer to that a few verses later.
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We couldn't say that Reuben is the only brother that actually has some affection for Joseph.
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Oh, you guys are always so hard on him. Come on, you know, let's give him a break. He's our, you know, he's our young brother.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And as the eldest, he would be responsible for whatever happened to Joseph. And so he seeks to deliver
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Joseph, not out of love for Joseph, so much out of a desire to repair this relationship with Jacob.
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We'll see that again in Genesis 42. Reuben will again put himself in this position of sacrifice.
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The command to shed no blood is in the second person plural. So the idea is, you all shed no blood.
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He's almost distancing himself from this desire. Don't shed his blood, you guys.
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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
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Noahide covenant in Genesis 9 -6, where we have the forbidding of the shedding of man's blood.
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He who sheds the blood of man, his blood must be shed, for man is made in the image of God.
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And Reuben seems to have heard and understood and now abides by that command.
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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.
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Now, that's significant as we move toward the end of this chapter, because it's the identifying fabric that leads
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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.
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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.
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They took him. They cast him into a pit. And we have a description of the pit.
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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.
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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 brother.
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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.
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We have a comparison, I think, of that fratricidal rage of Cain against righteous
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Abel mirrored now in the fratricidal rage of the jealous brothers against Joseph.
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Robert Gonzales, who wrote an excellent study called Where Sin Abounds, it's on the spread of sin in the patriarchal narratives.
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He says, in both cases, the unrighteous despised the righteous because God favored the latter.
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As Cain's anger and hatred intensified to the point of plotting murder, remember, sin is at your door, it's crouching there, you must rule over it, and yet he couldn't resist that rage.
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So the hatred of Joseph's brothers mounts until it results in this conspiracy. Cain actually murders
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Abel. Joseph's brothers stop short of murder and sell him into slavery, and yet their deeds amount to a virtual murder.
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Samuel Amadi, he has a book coming out in another month or so, which is a revision of his dissertation, which
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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.
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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.
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Major theme in Genesis, isn't it? Sibling rivalry. The brothers recapitulate
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Cain's fratricide in their plot to murder Joseph, while Joseph undergoes metaphorical death in the pit.
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Now this is very significant, and we're not saying he dies metaphorically so that we can just start talking about Jesus.
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We're saying to the ancient Near Eastern reader of Genesis 37, to be cast in the pit is to die as it were.
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So already embedded within the text is the death of the righteous son
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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.
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And so the reader's going, what happened to Joseph? He's dragged away off into Egypt, he's left in Potiphar's house, is that the last we'll hear of him?
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To remove him from the narrative is another way of sort of having a metaphorical death. Joseph undergoes metaphorical death in the pit.
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I'll give you some examples. In Psalm 30, we have this idea held together.
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Oh Lord, you brought my soul up from the grave. Translation could be Sheol, the place where the disembodied dead gather.
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Oh Lord, you brought my soul up from the grave, significant, up from the grave. Now here's the parallel statement.
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You have kept me alive so that I shall not go down into the pit. So notice what's being said.
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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.
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You kept me alive, you did not allow me to go into the pit. So notice how the pit in an ancient
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Near Eastern conception has the connotations of death or of the grave. We find this throughout the
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Joseph is entirely passive. We don't read of him ducking and rolling and trying to run for it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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He's not going to last more than three days. There's no water in the pit. And what do his brothers do?
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Verse 25, they sit down to eat, and they sat down to eat a meal.
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How callous, how cold -hearted. They gather around and spread a blanket and open up their lunchboxes, and their brother they've just cast into a pit to die.
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Did they say a prayer before they ate? How disconnected is their mind and their soul and their heart from what they've just done?
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How could you eat at a time like this? It shows the cruelty, the hatred of these brothers.
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Now again, I've just said Joseph, and I think this is significant for the way it points us to the gospel,
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Joseph is entirely passive. And so the way he's presented in Genesis 37 is that he submits to the suffering.
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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.
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Reuben in Genesis 42 says, we're truly guilty concerning our brother.
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We saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear.
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Therefore this distress comes upon us. And so the guilt and the conviction of that moment has finally settled upon their conscience.
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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.
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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.
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We heard him. He was pleading. The bloody, bruised, righteous brother calling out, pleading.
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Amos seems to have this in mind when he calls judgment upon Zion, really in the text, calls judgment upon Israel.
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Remember, this is Israel, Sands Joseph. These are the patriarchs of Israel. And Israel has cast the righteous son, the beloved son of the
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Father, toward his death, and they callously eat, almost proud of themselves.
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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.
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The idea there, Amos is saying, you know, woe to you wealthy, unafflicted in life, this is really
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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.
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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.
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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
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Genesis carefully enough, Israel, who are you more like, the righteous Joseph or the cruel, callous brothers that cast him to his death?
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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.
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And I can't help but think, is that not analogous to how the gospel is heard still today?
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The word of the gospel goes out like Joseph's cries, pleading, persuading, exhorting, calling, and the calloused, hardened hearts of sinners refuse to hear it.
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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.
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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.
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We sang yesterday around the fire a song,
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Bless Me to Tie That Binds, 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.
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I was reading a little bit about this, it was, I wouldn't even say blue -collar, it was less than blue -collar.
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It was almost caveman -like, and the Anglicans didn't want to touch it, like, we're not putting a parish with these animals.
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The Baptists were like, hey, we gotta do it, we gotta do it, and John Fawcett was called to preach there.
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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
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Baptist church after he was converted under the preaching of Whitefield at the age of 16.
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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
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Whitefield preached, the Son of Man must be lifted up. And 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
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Baptists were willing to plant a church there, because the Son of Man must be lifted up.
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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?
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Because the Son of Man must be lifted up. That is what happens when
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God removes the scales from the eyes, when He unstops the ears, when He casts out the stony heart, when the pleas of the
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Son of God through the call of the Gospel are heard and responded to in faith.
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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.
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But they're gathered at the table eating this meal together, and the Righteous One is cast out from them, they've cast
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Him into the grave. And the next time they share a meal together, they'll be gathered together around the table, and the
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One who they cast into the grave will be at the head of the table as Lord over them all.
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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.
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And so the providence of God is now in view as Joseph is bleeding out, dehydrated in the grave, in the pit.
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We read, then they lifted their eyes and looked. And so this is the kind of language of providence they just happened to notice.
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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.
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So Judah said to his brothers, what profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?
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Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites. Let not our hand be upon him. He is our brother and our flesh.
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And his brothers listened. We have the providence of God bringing now
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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.
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Reuben returns to the pit, and the narrative almost comes to his point of view.
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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
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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,
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Joseph was not in the pit. The idea is like he's absolutely stunned. And what does he do? He does what
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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?
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The rending of garments. Does that sound familiar? Reuben was there when they tore the clothes off of Joseph, the righteous brother.
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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.
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And he goes to his brothers, aware now of what has happened, and he says, glad is no more and I, where shall
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I go? That was his main concern. How can I go back to my father?
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What am I going to do? What am I going to say? This is going to be on my head, on my neck.
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What can I do? I'm going to be cast out of the household forever. I'm going to have to go into exile.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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He dishonors his father for 22 years. He lives with a stain on his conscience for 22 years.
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And the brothers all have a way out. They plan a deception.
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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.
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Again, that's emphatic for us. And they brought it to their father and said, look, we found this.
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Do you know whether or not it's your son's? They know. They know that Jacob knows.
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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.
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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?
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And Jacob recognized it and said, it is my son's tunic. Wild beasts has devoured him. It doesn't come across well in the
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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.
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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.
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The serpent of the garden came, tore the seed to shreds.
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Notice that Joseph's brothers conspire to deceive
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Israel, just like Israel had conspired to deceive
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Isaac. They take some goats in order to deceive him, just as Rebecca helped
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Jacob get some goats to deceive the father. They planted a forgery, and so the famous deceiver, the famous twister is himself deceived.
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Notice that they have to use goats as an animal, a sacrifice really for their own evil plan.
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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
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Passover, the dipping into the sacrificial blood. And Jacob tears his clothes.
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He had buried his beloved wife not far from Bethlehem, but now that precious boy, the firstborn of his beloved
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Rachel, as far as he knows is dead, and he tears his clothes and he puts on sackcloth.
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He ties it around his waist and he mourns day after day after day.
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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, you know, there is a danger in excessive grief.
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He assumed the worst and walked according to that, and his grief, you know, should have been turned toward hope.
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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
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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,
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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,
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I think the tone of the text says we don't understand grief well enough.
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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.
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I wish our culture had something like sackcloth, a visible manifestation of saying,
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I can't even maintain myself, I can't look after my meals or my appearance,
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I am entirely disheveled not just outwardly but inwardly, my soul is at pain and I cannot rise,
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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 have 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.
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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
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Calvin, though I would say in his time he was doing what was appropriate. Just look at the details,
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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,
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I'm going to go down to the grave mourning for my son. Thus his father wept for him.
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Well this all brings us to consider the passion of Jesus.
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If that's the passion of Joseph, this metaphorical death in the pit, all of this is key for us to consider the passion of Jesus.
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These jealous brothers, they conspire against their brother, their own flesh and blood.
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When we come to the passion of Jesus, we see this truth resounding. This is ultimately presenting to us the
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Gospel of Jesus, the sufferings that he experienced as our brother and our flesh.
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This was Genesis 37, this was Joseph's Gethsemane. This was
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Joseph's Calvary. He was stripped of his clothes.
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As Jesus in Mark 15 was brought before the guard of the
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Roman prefect, and they stripped his clothes, part of the humiliation, the eternally blessed
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Son of God seeking to cover himself and hold together something of his dignity while they flay and spit and scorn.
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Sold for pieces of silver, bound by a plot which is covered up, just as the
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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.
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His blood, the blood of the scapegoat really, being brought and presented to the
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Father. We see the glory of Christ in the passion of Joseph, knowing
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Joseph was entirely subject to this as something unbeknown to him, and yet Christ endured this willingly.
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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.
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And we ought to always have awe. We don't read it as Reuben distanced from this.
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We say with the hymn, died he for me who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued.
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Amazing love, how can it be? How can it be that thou, my
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God, shouldst die for me? Not me in the abstract, not me going through life and not realizing
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I needed to actually adopt the system of Christianity, no, 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.
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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.
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This is a reminder that the Son comes in our flesh as our brother.
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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.
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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.
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They're still with us today, the question of how can we understand the divinity and the humanity of Jesus.
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There was a constant seesaw in those early centuries of heresy, on the one hand denying that Jesus was truly preexistent with the
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Father, fully divine, co -equal, co -eternal with the Father as the eternally begotten
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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.
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So on the one hand, we have an ancient heresy like that taught by an elder named Apollinaris, takes its name from it,
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Apollinarianism. What did as a man mean to Apollinarians?
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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.
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You know, really, the only part of him that was divine was his mind.
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Everything else was human, but his mind was divine. His body was inhabited by this divine mind, this divine
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Word of God, but Scripture rejects this entirely. Jesus lacked nothing that we possess except our sins.
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The Cappadocian Fathers, in response to this heresy, among others, have a wonderful maxim.
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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.
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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
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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
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Son. And in this way, it reverberates throughout the whole Bible. This is the story of the beloved
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Son, who first had to be humiliated before he was exalted. Samuel Amadi, in his wonderful study, writes,
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Moses, writing Genesis, intertwines the theme of suffering and the theme of blessing, right? Covenantal blessing.
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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.
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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
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I have made, kingship, multiply, seed, take dominion over the land, and yet because of the fall, a new way is introduced.
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The covenant blessings will now come through suffering, because the mystery of the gospel, though still veiled at this point, is beginning to unravel.
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The way that the curse of the fall will be undone, the way that the head of the serpent will be crushed, will be a result of the serpent bruising the promised seeds healed.
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The covenantal blessing cannot come without the suffering. And so the goal of God's global kingdom remains,
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His universal dominion dwelling with His people in a land. But this new way shows us there's a king who will come and mediate the blessings of God among the earth, but the king will endure suffering before he arrives at the throne.
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The seed of the woman will engage in combat with the seed of the serpent, and that combat will come with a cost.
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We saw that with the righteous able. Supremely, we see that in Genesis 22, again, the gospel being slowly, progressively unveiled when
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God commands Abraham to take that long -awaited promised seed and sacrifice him. And as the writer of Hebrews says,
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Abraham recognized by faith that if it was God who had provided this promised seed out of the metaphorical death of Sarah's barren womb, then even in sacrifice,
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God could raise him from it. And so that substitute is provided, which happens to be a ram.
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Isaac is spared, God provides a ram, an emblem moving us toward the whole sacrificial system of the
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Levitical temple. The promise comes with that, though, again, thematic to Genesis, he shall possess his enemy's gate.
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So the offspring is promised to have that dominion, that kingship, that reign, to be blessed, and yet he'll come as a sacrifice.
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And then we come to Joseph and the veil is pulled back even a little bit further. How is kingship, how is seed, how is land going to be accomplished?
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Well, Joseph rises to the highest seat in the land. He spares and preserves the seed, but he does so through suffering.
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And now we see that suffering comes at the hands of his own brothers, his own flesh.
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The fullest exhibition of human evil is seen. If you think
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Joseph's brothers are callous to hear the howls of anguish from the pit while they have lunch, consider that the
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Lord of glory was crucified to laughter and spit. Here we see
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Joseph despairing of life, pleading with his brothers, but he's not heard by them, he's not found by them.
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This is Joseph's cry of dereliction, his cry of abandonment, his cry of being forsaken.
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And for the greater Joseph, we see also when he's in the pit of the cross, the cry of dereliction.
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What can Joseph cry out? His brothers won't hear him. I think eventually he realized, they hear me, but they don't hear me, they won't hear me.
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And I have to think he stopped crying for his brothers and started crying for someone who could never hear him, but he knew somehow his heart desired that it would be heard.
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I was thinking if you've ever seen Saving Private Ryan, there's this very touching scene when they're storming the beach of Normandy, and of course artillery is exploding all around, and there's one rather graphic scene where a soldier has sort of been disemboweled, and he's there on the beach and he knows he's dying and he starts crying out,
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Mama, Mama. He's not looking for his mom to come off the beachhead, and yet his heart wants her to hear, wants her to be present.
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And so I have to think at some point Joseph's cries go from Reuben, Judah, Asher, Gad, to Father.
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Father, it's the cry of dereliction.
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His heart wants to be heard, but he cannot be heard. Father, why have you forsaken me?
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He cries out to his father. His father is not present, but his heart must be heard.
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So what does he plea? From the pit, as his brother is still spitting and laughing and eating, rejecting him, waiting for him to die, he cries,
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Father, forgive them. Forgive them. We go to Genesis 42 when
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Reuben says, didn't I tell you, wouldn't you listen? I said, behold, his blood is now required of us.
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No, Reuben, his blood is shed for you, not required of you, given for you, freely, so that you might be forgiven.
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Joseph is the son who's cast into outer darkness, cast into exile, dragged out of the land, so that he might save his people and that they might enter into the land everlasting.
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Joseph's story is the story of Genesis. It's the story of the Bible. It's the story of humanity.
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It's the story which we stand in today. The story of glory through suffering.
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The story of a crown through a cross. And so what does that mean for us, lastly?
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What does that mean for us? The passion of Jesus must be our passion.
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Using passion in two senses here. We already said the passion of Jesus refers to his suffering.
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But that must be his suffering, his cross, must be our passion, now meaning a strong feeling of enthusiasm.
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According to Webster, an excitement, a compelling emotion, an ardent affection.
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The cross of Jesus must be the strongest feeling of enthusiasm, the greatest delight of excitement, a rolling wave of compelling emotion, ardent, consistent affection.
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Jesus, keep us near the cross. As we've seen, the passion is already central to Genesis 37, and insofar as it's central there, it's central to the storyline of Genesis.
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And insofar as it's central to Genesis, it's central to the whole of Scripture. And it must be central in our worship.
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And it must be central in our practical daily life. So those are the two applications.
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The passion of Jesus, central in our worship, central in our daily practical lives.
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It is our very boast as followers of Jesus that he died on a cross for our sins.
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Paul says in Galatians 6, God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says, Far be it from me to boast in anything except in the cross of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe some of you,
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I was talking with Marie, or Marie was talking to me about this on Thursday night. Some of you have maybe seen some of the highlight reels from the
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Southern Baptist Convention this year. Not that we are Southern Baptists, but still interesting. And Rick Warren, a preacher at Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches, megachurches in the country, went up, said,
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This may be my last convention. And I wanted to write,
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I don't want to defend myself and some of the decisions I've made. I don't want to defend myself. I just want to write a love letter as I depart the convention, and perhaps the
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Southern Baptist Convention, kind of feeling the heat of the bullseye on him. And then in his love letter to the
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SPC, he had this constant refrain, If it weren't for the Southern Baptist Convention, I could not have.
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And then there was a bullet list of all, in his mind, all of his accomplishments. All the churches that he planted, all the people that he baptized, all the pastors that he trained.
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And the numbers were the key. Tens of thousands. He claimed a million. If you trained a million pastors, they must not be very good, because if we had a million gospel -preaching pastors in the world, it would be very different.
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And I think people were rather put off at his boasting.
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If there ever was a humble brag, it was that. Far be it from me to boast in anything except the cross.
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Al Mohler, who went up after, addressed some other things related to the convention.
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I remember him giving a lecture, and he talked about, as a student, in a seminary that was rather liberal at the time, he had a professor, and someone brought up the cross, and the professor interrupted the question.
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And he said, we'll have none of that here. We'll have no bloody cross religion here. And Mohler was reflecting on that sentiment, removing the cross, removing the crucifixion from our understanding of the good news of Jesus, or even what the gospel means.
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When we understand the gospel, the bloody cross is the very center of it. There is no gospel if there's not a bloody cross.
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The gospel is the bloody cross. You don't know the
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Word of God until you see it having this beating, blazing heart of the sacrifice of the
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Beloved Son glowing through the pages, the center of the storyline, the center of human history is the death and resurrection of the
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Son of God. And if we don't see all of the ways that God points us toward the sacrificial death, and we don't rehearse and remind ourselves and celebrate and exhort and compel in light of the cross week by week in our gathered worship, then we're going to go the way of the liberal church.
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We're going to teach a Jesus that came to give us a noble ideal, to teach us some sort of generic kumbaya unity in the world.
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A Jesus that comes to meet our temporal needs, sort out our worldly problems, give us a sense of more fulfillment as we're going about our own ambitions and desires.
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Jesus did not come to give us a noble example.
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Jesus did not come as the hippie of hippies. Jesus did not come to sort out your temporal needs and problems, help you feel more confident and secure and fulfilled as you go about your ambitions in this life.
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Jesus did not come merely to set a worthy example for people to follow. No. He came to die for sins.
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The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.
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The Son of Man must be lifted up. He came to give
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His life as a ransom for many. There's this ad. It's funny, just last night as I was looking up some
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Scripture, it came on the side of the webpage that I was searching. And I was like, what is this?
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Is this Mormon? Is this JW? I hate the mystery. You make me search for it. And I know I'm giving you all this revenue now because I'm clicking to find out who's supporting this.
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The whole campaign was called He Gets Us. He Gets Us. I looked it up.
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It's a $100 million campaign. Big money. And I think it has the very noble goal of trying to find a bridge to reach people and at least get them thinking or asking questions about Jesus.
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And I also appreciate, I'm going to be rather rude, so let me just give some good things about it. I also appreciate that they don't think our campaign and our media is going to be the end all.
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They say our hope is that local churches and Christians will be there to receive these questions and these answers.
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Amen. But as I looked at their About page, and I trusted that behind links of would you like to learn more for the average skeptic or curious wanderer,
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I thought well perhaps there is when they start to introduce these things. But every page that I looked at and every summary
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I could find went something like this. This is about getting to know the real Jesus. How Jesus experienced the same problems and emotions that we've all been through.
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It's about providing a safe place to ask questions, including tough ones. Realizing that Jesus is as relevant today as He was 2 ,000 years ago.
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This is about sharing Jesus' radical love and acceptance of everyone. You may see
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Christians as hypocritical or judgmental. That's not what Jesus was about. Instead, Jesus offered radical compassion, stood up for the marginalized, understood the human condition and all of its frailties because He experienced them too.
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We want to reveal the actual human experiences that Jesus had in His life and share them with you.
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His teachings. How He lived. It just might help you with your job or your family or your relationships.
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As well as dealing with things like rejection, anxiety, depression, and even more. Now I read that and I'm trying to be charitable.
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I read that not as the entry point or the gotcha grab, but as spending some time looking at the summary.
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What's this all about? And I can't help but follow the emphasis being on the human experiences
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He gets us. His life, His teachings, how He lived. It might help you. It might help these things in your life.
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And I can say, perhaps like Corinth, I can say they're trying to promote a desire to know
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Christ. They would have people know Christ. They would have people see the relevance of Christ.
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Find a connection point to Christ. But Paul comes to Corinth and he says, I came to you desiring to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.
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It's not ultimately about His life and the way He lived and what He experienced in life, and His teachings during His life.
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If you don't get to His death, there was no point to His life. I delivered to you,
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Paul says later in the same letter, first of all, not hidden eight pages down on a summary, but first of all,
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I delivered to you that which I received first of all, that Christ died for our sins.
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That's the first message that Paul desired his hearers to know.
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I'm not going to tell you about how Jesus lived until you understand how
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Jesus died and why He died, because only then is His life relevant for you.
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The passion must be central in our worship. You ought to be suspicious of crossless
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Christianity. There is no Gospel unless it's a bloody cross
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Gospel. The passion must be central in our worship.
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Consider where we stand this morning. Not shaking with shadows of temple sacrifices looking forward to Christ, but having a faith that looks back upon that which
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He accomplished. We can say more than any Israelite ever dared the words of Isaiah, the words of the
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Lord to us, I, even I, am He who blots out your sins. I have blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions.
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I have redeemed you. We're the recipients of that. We understand the fullness of the whole storyline of Scripture.
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All of Genesis 37 being comprehended in these words on the cross, it is finished.
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It becomes personal to us, intimate, ultimate. These are not old tired truths.
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Though they are familiar to us, they are ever fresh. If you're a Christian, there's something about the old, old story that never gets old.
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Vivid displays of the power of the Gospel. This is not something we depart from and move on from.
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This is not milk to which we need spiritual meat. This is meat. This is all that sustains our life as Christians.
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This is all that our worship is designed to celebrate. Do we gather as those who are blessed in Psalm 32?
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Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
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Lord does not impute iniquity and whose spirit there is no deceit. The psalmist takes this on personally.
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I acknowledge my sin to you. My iniquity I have not hidden. I said I will confess my transgression to the
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Lord. You forgave the iniquity of my sin. And so what's the conclusion? Be glad in the
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Lord and rejoice, you righteous. Shout for joy, all of you upright in heart. Who is shouting for joy in the gathered worship?
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Who is shouting for joy? The righteous. Shout for joy, you righteous. Shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
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And in Psalm 32, who are the righteous? Who are the upright in heart? Those whose sins are forgiven.
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Those to whom iniquity is not imputed. Those who have understood and embraced and felt the power of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ for their souls.
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They are the ones that worship in spirit and in truth. They are the ones that come to celebrate. Sometimes that celebration is solemn.
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Sometimes it's heavy. It's piercing in conviction. But more than any of that, it ought to be joyous.
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We gather at our own table, not the table before Jesus was cast into the grave as calloused sinners unable to hear
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His pleas, but we gather at this table after He has risen from the grave, having ears to hear
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Him pleading for us to come and partake of His broken body and the blood that was spilled for us.
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And we gather at this table as often as we eat and drink it. What are we doing?
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We're remembering the Lord's death. We're not gathered to have squares of bread and talk about platitudes or life coach.
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We're not here to give some winsome practical advice that would be as effective in the life of a sheep as it would be in a goat.
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We're here to remember the Lord's death. And everything in our lives is comprehended from that perspective.
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Jesus says, whatever is preached, whatever is taught, whatever is done, what you must do when you gather as often as you do it is remember that.
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Remember My cross. Remember My broken body. Remember My blood. That's what you must do in worship.
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Remember. Central. The passion. So that's the first point.
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The passion must be central in our worship. And secondly, the passion must be central in our practical life.
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As we said, this is what interprets everything. That's Luther's statement. Crux probat omnia.
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The cross interprets everything. Everything in our life is interpreted through the lens of the cross.
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What it means to be who I am and what I am to do and how I am to treat others and what
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I am to pursue. Everything in my life is defined by the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. How I can have a standing before Him.
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How I am to relate to Him. How I am disarmed from any hope that I can do more and be saved.
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All of that is stripped away at the cross. My body given for you.
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My blood shed for you. This has to be at the very core of our daily lives.
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If we celebrate this and rehearse this and make this the focal point of our gathered worship, we're meant to take from that into our daily lives that same perspective, that same glorious hope and celebration.
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And as that runs out of fuel Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we come stumbling back on Sunday to be refreshed and invigorated by the power and the beauty and the glory of the cross.
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And so there's this feedback loop between gathered worship, gathered celebration around the emblems and the symbols and the word of the cross.
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And we take that with us into our daily lives, into our devotions. Your devotional time ought to be cross -centered.
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Don't spend your devotional time looking for self -help. Google is your enemy when it comes to devotional time.
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Open up the Word and see how frequently it gives, whether in symbol or in deed, images of the crucifixion of the
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Lord. Our devotions are cross -centered because all of the means of grace come to us as cross -centered means of grace.
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Every means of grace is meant to bring us to a better view of the cross. That's why it's a means of grace.
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All of God's unassailable grace, the grace that could never access, the grace that we could never hope to achieve, the grace hidden behind the veil and the
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Holy of Holies, which we dare not approach, it's only the cross that tears that open, that unleashes that grace toward us.
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There's no other channel or access point to God's grace unless it comes to us through the cross.
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And so every means of grace is ultimately designed to bring you in view of the cross.
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And if you're using your means of grace in any other way than to lead you to the cross, you won't find grace.
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There'll be a means to something else, but it won't be a means to grace. Grace comes at the foot of the cross.
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We follow Paul's advice, desiring to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.
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I don't pander after a spiritual zap or a formula. I just seek to know
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Christ and Christ crucified. If I'm taking up the means of grace, reading the
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Word, reading books that get me into the Word, spending time in fellowship, coming to church on a
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Sunday, praying, if I do that without a view to the cross, then it doesn't become something that warms my heart, but rather just a different avenue toward staying cold or getting more cold.
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Like the day yesterday, right? We were all gathered around the fire. Think of that fire as the means of grace.
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And that, you know, fire, it starts to winnow a little bit and someone takes the pallet. Maybe that's prayer.
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Maybe that's fellowship. Maybe that's being here this morning. Maybe that's spending time in the Word and they throw that pallet on the fire.
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And it's not instant, right? It doesn't go... That's never how a means of grace works.
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You're like, why am I even doing this? This isn't a fad. Just not in the mood. And you put the pallet on out of obedience if that's all you have left.
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And pretty soon it starts to heat up. And it's warm. But the day gets colder and the night gets longer.
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And as you're away from that flame, you get cold, right? Your fingers turn blue. I saw some kiddos with blue toes yesterday.
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That's the means of grace. And there's nothing that will make the means of grace more blazing, more warming, more effective in your life than when those means of grace bring you before the sacrifice of Jesus for you.
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All that He is and all that He has done for you. You don't come to Him with gifts and trinkets of what you've done and what's worked out this week, and hopefully that's enough.
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When you come to the cross, all of that is stripped away from you. You're just brought to humble thankfulness.
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Awe. That's why the means of grace have to lead you to the cross. Of course you're going to find idols in your heart.
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Who doesn't have idols in their heart? Who doesn't have needs and anxieties? Who doesn't have all the things that He gets us and wants you to relate to?
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But if that ultimately doesn't bring you to the cross, then you'll find no grace, no power in your life.
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The means of grace from day to day must be a cross -centered means. I love what
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Spurgeon says. Christ did not love you for your good works.
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They weren't the cause of His beginning to love you. He didn't come because He said, some of them are starting to do pretty good. I better go now and die for them.
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No, He died like Joseph was in that pit for those brothers. And if you were not the cause of His beginning to love you,
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He does not love you for your good works even now. They're not the cause of His continuing to love you.
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He loves you because He loves you. But how can
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I know that? It doesn't feel like that. I don't love me. How could
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He love me? I'm not worthy of being loved. I'm not even capable of loving.
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How could He love me? What's the proof? The proof is the cross.
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The proof is the cross. A Muslim doesn't have proof. How do you know that Allah loves you?
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You just hope. Hope you're one of Allah's elect. There's no proof.
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If your heart is cold toward the things of God, if your heart is cold toward the souls of others, if your own soul is frigid and cold, drawn near to the fire of Calvary, warm your hands and your feet and your heart, consider the cross of Jesus.
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John Flavel, great Puritan, did the love of Christ break through so many obstacles to come to you?
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Did it make its way through God's law and God's wrath and through the grave and even through your own unbelief and your own unworthiness and still come to you?
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What a love of Christ was to your soul, and is your love not strong enough to break through the vanity of this world and go to Him?
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So come boldly to the throne of grace, as the writer of Hebrews says.
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Crown Him the Lord of love. Behold His hands,
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His side, rich wounds still visible above. Consider Him and consider the cross.
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Are you among the blessed here this morning? Have you been blessed at the foot of the cross? Can you shout for joy with the saints?
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Do you know that He died for you in your soul? Will you gather to the table of the hardened sinners who will not hear
01:07:51
His pleas? Or will you gather to this table, for those that pursued
01:07:57
Him to death, for those that nailed Him to the tree, for those that He came to save, for the lost sheep that He gathered like lambs into His bosom to bear them up, those that He gathered beneath His breast like a mother hen, protecting them from the ravages of the foxes?
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Will you come to this table? Will you eat of His broken body? Will you drink of His blood?
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Come boldly to the throne of grace. Let's pray. Father, we thank
01:08:37
You for Your Word. We thank You for the Gospel. Here even in the life and death really of Joseph.
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And we pray, Lord. We say with the psalmist of Psalm 130, out of the depths we cry to You, O Lord.
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Lord, hear our voice. Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of our supplications.
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If You, Lord, should mark our iniquities, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You that You may be feared.
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And so, we wait for the Lord. Our soul waits. And in Your Word we hope.
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Our soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. Yes, more than those who watch for the morning.
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Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy. With Him there is abundant redemption.
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Lord, we pray You would help us to be glad in You, to shout for joy as those whose sins have been covered over because of the blood of the
01:09:35
Lamb of God, that we might shout for joy, that we might have an impact in our lives from day to day as sinners redeemed by Your blood.
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These things we ask in Your Son's name. Amen. Well, now's our time for interaction.
01:10:54
Well, hey, thank you for preaching. It's always good to hear the Gospel. You bring out a lot of stuff that...
01:11:00
And I'm not saying it's not right. I'm just saying you bring out a lot of stuff that I've never really heard before with this account, so...
01:11:06
I'm banking that that's right, so thank you. I appreciate that. I know that sometimes there's things there that you don't really see on a face -value reading.
01:11:15
But one thing towards the end, and you talked about, you know, the two points of practice, the passion of Jesus, central in worship, and I can understand that, and central in our lives, and then you talked about the means of grace.
01:11:30
Is there other ways? I mean, because, you know, I have to admit, I've at times focused on some of the niceties and some of the benefits of Christ and not on, you know, the cross sometimes.
01:11:43
But I was thinking besides the means of grace, what other ways can we, you know, to get your words right, can we have the passion of Christ reflected in our practical lives?
01:11:56
Yeah. That's honestly a great question. I can think of some others. I think there are others.
01:12:02
And I'd like to hear from others about that. I think there are other ways beyond God -prescribed means of grace, like prayer, reading, you know, family worship.
01:12:15
There's other ways that we keep the cross front and center in our practical lives. I can think of a few.
01:12:23
I'm sure others can as well. Brother Jim.
01:12:36
I'm sorry, I was about to say I felt like I'm at the town meeting again. I ask a question, nobody answers it. I'd like to hear what others have to say.
01:12:44
I have a feeling some people will follow my train of thought as well. I'll be brief on this.
01:12:54
The world is suffering greatly. It always has. And it took great suffering to pay for the remedy to it all.
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And that's all I'm going to say. Awesome job, though. Praise the
01:13:12
Lord. Really wonderful. Praise the Lord. Yeah.
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I mean, I don't know if this would be in the category of the means of grace, but, you know, being obedient to Christ and serving others,
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I think, you know, you know, you can, if your time in the
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Word and your time in prayer and your time in church
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I think doesn't cause you to love God and love others, then I'm not sure that it's very cross -centered.
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So, I mean, maybe serving others is a fruit of the cross, but it certainly goes the other way around.
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It should, if we're doing it rightly. So I think having compassion on others, serving others,
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I feel like, you know, that Joseph's brothers were so, because of their sinful flesh, were so far from that.
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I mean, what caused them not to have, to see the God that their father saw, right?
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What caused them to do that was just this self -centeredness of serving themselves and thinking that they should be the ones in authority and seeing
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Joseph as an obstacle to what they want. So I feel like if we serve others sacrificially, that that is, you know, that helps us rightly to focus on the cross because that's what
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Christ did. I don't know if that means grace or not. But whether it is or not, works of mercy or service, the cross ought to be at the center of that.
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And it's a way that not only compels us to go, but it actually shapes what we're doing and how we do it.
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It makes us tender and sensitive and humble and meek because we're not doing it as the
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Pharisees would do works of mercy, which was almost checking off the box and then trumpeting it.
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We do it as meek, unworthy servants, right? So that's one answer.
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And that's a real genuine love for others, which is not just a thought.
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It's not just prayers, but it's action. And I fail at this, like everyone else in this room does, but the cross is not separate from that.
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It just can't be. And that's where we fall short so often is to look at a lost and dying world and say, ah, you know,
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I'm busy, right? And chalk it up to, you know, I'm working, I'm providing,
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I'm doing all these things I'm supposed to do, right? You don't forsake that, but it's just easily, it's easily forsaken.
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Serving others and loving others that know the Lord, first of all, and the church, and then also having, you know, motivation to preach the gospel and share the gospel with others, right?
01:16:26
Amen. Evangelism would be a second one to your point. Works of mercy, evangelism, you know, and we ought to, it ought to be intuitive to us that you're not really getting to the gospel of evangelism if it's not a cross -focused gospel.
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The cross defines what evangelism is. And so that's another way that the cross is kept, you know, the center of our practical lives.
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And if it's there devotionally, if it's there in our means of grace, we're gonna find more and more opportunities to be evangelistic.
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If you're Googling self -help, your eyes are not even open to sharing the good news of the cross because it's all inward about how
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I can get through this or deal with this. So I say Google is the enemy of your devotional time.
01:17:15
But as the scriptures lead you to a view of the cross, you'll be led to share that view with others. My lovely wife is reminding me of discipleship, right?
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You know, I mean, that's, how many people say, hey, when I evangelize, it just draws me closer to the
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Lord. Well, when you disciple people or you, you know, you meet with people and you share of the
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Lord and you share of your life in the Lord with them, there is no greater feeling.
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And that's because you feel like you're doing the work of Christ. I'm really blessed in this body when men, you know, reach out to me or want to meet or, you know, whatever.
01:18:00
Sometimes we meet on a Saturday morning. When I see vigor in men who want to meet and discuss things of the
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Lord, how exciting and how encouraging is that to me? And I'll give up a lot for that.
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I'll say, hey, I'll give up hours in the morning. I'll give up something else I'm going to do. Why? Because you have an opportunity to disciple or be discipled.
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That should come hand in hand with the cross. And there's a lot of important things that we do week to week in our homes and our family and work and this and that.
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But if that's not carved out, if there's not some carved out, whether it's informally or formally,
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I think you're carving a piece of the cross just out. I'm not saying throwing it out or just not giving attention to it.
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And I've been there. I've done that. It's not healthy. It doesn't cause you to grow because in order to be less self -centered, you need to be really, you know, discipling and working with people and sharing
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God's truth in your life and experience with people, right? Amen.