Transcription
Please open up your Bible to the book of Genesis chapter 34. Genesis chapter 34, verse 37. Please, Genesis chapter 37, beginning now at verse 12. I'll just start reading the text and read the first several verses, starting at verse 12.
Then his brothers went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. And Israel said to, and Israel said to Joseph, "Are not your brothers feeding the flock in Shechem? Come, I will send you to them." So he said to him, "Here I am."
Then he said, "Please go see if it is well with your brothers and well with the flocks, and bring back word to me." So he sent him out of the valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. Now a certain man found him, and there he was wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, "What are you seeking?" And he said, "I'm seeking my brother's. Please tell me where they are feeding their flocks." And the man said, "They have departed from here, for I heard them say, 'Let us go to Dothan.'" So Joseph went after his brothers and found them in Dothan.
Last week, when we began a series taking a look at the life of Joseph, and in particular how the life of Joseph points towards the person and the work of Jesus Christ, we saw that Joseph came from a very messed-up family. I mean, sometimes we use the phrase "dysfunctional family." Joseph's family was extremely dysfunctional. Things were very messed up, and part of the problem was, was that when you have one man who has 13 children from four different wives, there's going to be a lot of sibling rivalry, especially when you pick out one of those sons and so obviously make him the favorite over the others.
So now we see that Joseph's brothers, now I'm gonna count his brothers as 10. There were 12 total, but Joseph is back at home. And I'm gonna assume, though I don't really know, that perhaps Benjamin, the other favored son, was at home. So let's just say there were ten brothers of Joseph out managing the livestock. These were agricultural people, and a big part of their business was to manage huge flocks of sheep and goats numbering in the thousands. And that was sort of a nomadic lifestyle. You had to take them from place to place so that they could find good ground to graze on. In any regard, the brothers are out doing their thing, feeding the flocks. And what does Jacob, the father of Joseph, say? He says to him, verse 14, "Please go and see if it is well with your brothers and well with the flocks."
The first thing I want you to notice: Joseph's brothers are out doing the hard work, sleeping on the ground under tents, dealing with all the sheep, all the difficulty. Joseph is back at home. He's not out with his brothers doing the hard work. Then, when his father wants somebody to check up on his brothers, to supervise them, to inform on their bad behavior, who does he send? Joseph. And if that's not enough, look at the phrasing there in verse 14: "Please go and see if it is well with your brothers." Now, look, I grew up in a good home with a loving mother and a loving father, but I don't ever remember my parents telling me "please" when I went to go do the chores. No, it wasn't, "David, could you please go pick up the dog mess in the backyard?" It didn't work like that. It was just, "Do it." And again, I was a loving, good home, but you get it. Doesn't it seem strange to you that Joseph is so favored in his father's eyes that the father says "please" to him to go do it? And he sends him off on a rare errand that's going to put him in a supervisory role over his ten other brothers who already hated him. You got the wheels turning. This is not going to end out well.
Verse 18: "Now when they saw him afar off, even before they came near them, they conspired against him to kill him." You have the picture. There's Joseph walking from afar. If the brothers are there with the thousands of sheep and goats there in Dothan, it was about a 10 or 15-mile walk from Shechem to Dothan. There they are in the midst of it. They're all there together. They'd see him coming afar off, and they say, "There's Joseph. We hate that guy. Our Father Jacob has sent Joseph to us to inspect us, to supervise us, to tell us what to do. He's gonna walk around with a clipboard and a cup of coffee and tell us what we're doing wrong, and then he's gonna go back and rat us out to Dad. We hate this guy." That's what they said, seeing him from afar off coming.
And then we read the words that are shocking in verse 18. And later, I want you to feel how shocking this is. Sometimes we read the Bible and we kind of go on automatic pilot where we'll read outrageous things in the Bible. Now, I don't mean outrageous in that they're not true, but they're genuinely shocking things, and we just get kind of numb when we read them. "Oh yeah, okay, great." Would you read verse 18 and be shocked by it? "They conspired against him to kill him." This is their own brother. They didn't say, "You know what? Let's bully him really good. Let's give him an Indian burn he will never forget." Do you know what an Indian burn is? I might have tuned to it. An Indian burn is where they take your skin, and brothers, older brothers seem to specialize in doing this on younger brothers, where they just rub your skin really hard until it makes it just kind of red and uncomfortable. "Let's give him an Indian burn, he'll never forget. Let's push. We're gonna bully him. Oh, he's gonna hear it from us." Now, I'm not saying any of those things would be right, but it would be understandable, given the troubled relationship between Joseph and his brothers. But do you realize how bizarre it is that they'll say, "Let's kill him"? Not only because of what it would do against Joseph, but they knew that it would be like a dagger in the heart of their father. They didn't care. We see the depths of the hatred and the dysfunction in this family, and we're shocked by it.
Now, the other thing I want to point out before going to verse 19: When we see how shocking their sin is, we understand that the sin was in their heart before it was ever acted out. Do you understand that our sin problem begins in the heart? Sometimes we think our sin problem is all about our behavior. And look, the behavior is a big deal. I'm not saying that we ignore the behavior, but your behavior has a cause that comes from the inside. Christian transformation is not just about changing your behavior; it's about having Jesus Christ change you from the inside out. We just don't need to act in a different way; we need Jesus to make us different people. And again, I'm not ignoring the place of behavior that we got to focus on it. There's a time and a place for that, but don't miss the inside. It's possible for somebody to look fine on the outside but be corrupt on the inside. But even when you see somebody who displays bad stuff on the outside, it's because there is corruption on the inside. That's how it was with Joseph's brothers.
Now, verse 19: "Then they said to one another, 'Look, this dreamer is coming. Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit, and we shall say some wild beast has devoured him; we shall see what becomes of his dreams.'" So his brothers mocked him as the dreamer. In a sense, Joseph brought this upon himself by the foolish way that he spoke of his God-given dreams before his brothers. But leaving that aside, notice the depravity of the brothers' hearts. Not only did they initially say, "Let's kill him," now they're applauding it, and they're already plotting the cover-up. Okay, so we kill him, we tear him limb from limb, we clubbed him to death. What do we do then? Oh, we can tell Dad that a wild beast ate him. Yeah, that'll work. They're planning the cover-up already. Man, it, it's one thing, isn't it, to have sin in your heart? Then it's another thing to think about doing it. Then it's another thing to say you'll do it. And then it's a thing on top of that to already start plotting your cover-up. You got to break the cycle. You got to break this cycle and say, "No, we got to stop. We can't go down this road."
But to me, that's not even the worst part about verses 19 and 20. Look at what they say in verse 20: "We shall see what will become of his dreams." Now, there's a lot of talk about Joseph being a dreamer, and there's kind of a standard way that preachers take the life of Joseph. I hope nobody misunderstands you. I'm not trying to speak against any other preacher or anything, but just, I just kind of got in touch with it this week in my own mind. There's an approach to the life of Joseph that says the life of Joseph shows us how to fulfill your dreams. God's given you a dream, and Joseph will show you how to fulfill it. Later, the life of Joseph is not about you fulfilling your dreams. It's just not. Matter of fact, the life of Joseph wasn't really about him fulfilling his dreams. When Joseph was in the coat of many colors, enjoying his father's favor, with the clipboard and the coffee cup, bossing around his brothers, he was living his dream. He already had it.
But I'll tell you this about Joseph: Joseph never dreamed of being a slave. Joseph never dreamed of being falsely accused of rape. He never dreamed of being left in prison to rot. He never dreamed of being the second most powerful man in Egypt. He never dreamed of saving the world from famine. But God's dream for Joseph was better and greater than any dream that Joseph could have come up with by himself. Here's the problem with focusing on your dream for your life: God's dream is probably even bigger and better for you than your own dream for your own life. Now, please, it's very important that nobody misunderstand me. I don't mean to imply that if you want something for your life, then it's automatically wrong. No, God often builds those desires in our heart and in our life. Sometimes it can be totally consistent with calling and purpose in everything that he gives us. But the important point is this: Poor bird has realized that I can't live my life focused on fulfilling my dreams. I have to seek and say, "God, what is Your dream and Your plan for my life?" And somewhere along the line, that may mean dying to aspects of my dream.
What's the price of getting this wrong? The price of getting this wrong is that you can have a completely wrong perception of the Christian life. And when I say "completely," I mean completely. Let me explain to you how some people perceive the Christian life. Something like this: I have my story. Let's say the movie of my life. I'm the writer, I'm the director. But it hasn't gone so well. The movie of my life stinks. So, you know what I need? I need to bring Jesus into the movie of my life. Now, not as the lead actor. Come on, that's me. But Jesus, man, you're great. You can be the best supporting actor in the movie of my life. Man, and you know what? This is gonna make this movie a hit. This movie's gonna come up just exactly like it, 'cause I invited Jesus to be the best supporting actor of the movie of my life. That is not Jesus's plan for your life. You know what Jesus says? "Rip up the script. Lay it down. And I want you to be a player in my great plan. I want you to have a place in my great purpose." Jesus says, "Let me be the writer. Let me be the director. And I will show you things of yourself and in yourself and use you to a capacity that you never thought possible. You're gonna see that it's so much greater than what you ever dreamed for yourself." But it'll never happen as long as you're fixated on your dreams and make Jesus just a means, just a way to accomplish your dreams in life. That's the first thing we notice.
But the second thing we notice: Look at what the brothers say in verse 20. They say, "We shall see what will become of his dreams." No, the life of Joseph isn't really about fulfilling my dreams. It's about God fulfilling His Word. Do you understand what Joseph's dreams were? They were messages from God. They were God's Word to Joseph and his family. And these brothers deliberately said, "That word is not true, and we're going to defeat it. Joseph dreamed that we would bow down to him. It's never gonna happen. We're gonna defeat that dream. We're gonna defeat God's Word." And so they determined to defeat God's Word. Let me give you the little principle: It's not hard to understand. God's Word never fails. Never. Never. What God said about Joseph was true, and it would come to pass no matter what the brothers tried to do against it. But I'll tell you what else is true: What God said about Jesus Christ is true, and it will completely come to pass.
Now, you might think, "Well, I thought what God said about Jesus is all in the past tense. He was the Son of God. He did miracles. He taught. He died on the cross. He rose from the dead." Although that's true, do you realize what God says about what Jesus will do in the future is true as well? Jesus Christ is going to return to this earth to judge the living and the dead. It's true. You can bank on it. You can invest your entire life into trying to defeat that proposition. It will never, ever happen. Our job is to prepare for it. Our job is to be ready for Jesus, to be ready to face Him as judge, to be ready to face the One who created us and offers us redemption in His name, and to say, "We are ready for it," because what God says about Jesus is true, and it's gonna come to pass, and there's nothing any one of us can do about it except be ready for it. The brothers thought that they could defeat God's Word, and they never, ever could.
Now, starting at verse 21, we see a small glimmer of encouragement. Look at verse 21: "But Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands and said, 'Let us not kill him.'" And Reuben said to them, "Shed no blood, but cast him into the pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him, that he might deliver him out of their hands and bring him back to his father."
Okay, I know that the scene in my mind, at least, that works out in my mind. The brothers are crowding around Joseph. They're punching him, they're kicking him. He's got a black eye already. They're ready to push him around. They're saying the most cruel, hateful things towards him. They've taken, "We're gonna kill him, we're gonna kill him." And I don't mean metaphorically. They're ready to kill him. Somebody's rustling up a club or a knife to finish the deed. Reuben comes over. "Ruin, no, no, no, no, stop. Some sums us up." And Reuben doesn't try to persuade them not to do it. He just suggests an alternative plan. Reuben isn't trying to stop them; he's trying to outsmart them. Yes, "No, no, no, no, let's delay it. Let's throw them in that pit over there. We can have some lunch, and then we can come back to the business of killing them when we have our stomachs filled. How about that?" "No, okay, great. Sounds pretty good." Reuben was able to talk them out of immediately killing Joseph and delaying it a little bit until they had cast him into a pit.
So notice what happens. I'm gonna start reading from verse 23 and I'm gonna read to the middle of verse 25. Okay, so ready for this? "So 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. Then they took him and cast him into a pit, and the pit was empty; there was no water in it. And they sat down to eat a meal." They're shoving, punching, kicking Joseph. They're saying the most hateful things to him. And then, you know what they do? They grab ahold of that coat of many colors that's on him, and they rip it from them, and they're laughing and mocking him as they do it. Verse 23 says, "They stripped Joseph's father's tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him, with cruel pleasure." They bullied Joseph and they ripped from him the sign of his father's favor. Do you know what the coat of many colors said? The coat of many colors said, "I specially love my son. He's my favorite." That's what the coat meant. And the brothers hated that. You can see why they hated it. They rip it from Joseph, they throw it on the ground, they're laughing and mocking. And ladies and gentlemen, I cannot picture this scene without thinking of how our Savior Jesus Christ was stripped of everything before He was crucified. How they stripped everything away and they mocked Him as being cursed of God. "You're not favored by the Father, Jesus. You're cursed. We're gonna strip from you everything. We're gonna mock you. Instead, we're gonna beat you." And even though Jesus was lifted up on a cross and Joseph was thrown down into a pit, I want you to notice that both Joseph and Jesus were stripped. They were declared cursed, and they were put into a place that they could seemingly never rescue themselves from. You see how closely Joseph's experience speaks to us of the experience of Jesus?
Friends, there is another aspect of this as well. There's the aspect of thinking that upon every believer, God has displayed His love and His favor. I'm speaking to those of you who are followers of Jesus Christ. You're not waiting to make that decision; you already have. And you know what it is to have a walk with God. Listen, God has given you a coat of many colors that says, "I love you. You're precious to me." He's God. He's giving you this garment. You're clothed in His favor, in His righteousness. Can you just think of that picture? Can you think of everybody just having a coat of many colors on? I don't want to look like it, but just picture it in your mind. We all have this coat of many colors. But wait, you have an enemy of your souls who hates the fact that you enjoy the favor of your father. You know, it's like God whispers down into your ear, "I love you. You're my favorite." You ever feel that way between you and God? Now, of course, we're all His favorite. It's almost that thing that parents will do: "You're my favorite, but don't tell your sister." You know, God wants us all to feel as if we're His favorite because we are. We're all specially loved of the Father. So there's a coat of many colors upon all of us. But, but there's an enemy of your soul who wants to rip it from you. There's an enemy of your soul who does not want to see you living in the love, in the peace, in the satisfaction, in the favor of God your Father. And there's just some of us who just need to say, "Father, I'm gonna reject that. I'm gonna receive and live and walk in this coat of many colors that You've given me. I'm gonna proudly take on and appropriately take on. I'm gonna receive it in Jesus' name, this special mark of favor that You've given to me."
That's not what they did with Joseph. They stripped him. They threw him down in the pit. What it was was an old cistern. It was sort of a pit used to store water in. I don't know, it could be as little as 10 feet deep, maybe 20 or 25 feet deep. You know, they had a narrow opening at it. They pushed him down it. He falls down hard at the bottom. He's bruised. It maybe there's a bone out of joint. He doesn't know what to do with it. And then what does he hear? He hears the brothers say, "Hey, can you pass me that lamb chop? A little more bread over here, please." Look at what it says in the beginning of verse 25: "And they sat down to eat a meal." Do you see how heartless these brothers are? They could eat a meal with Joseph agonizing in the pit. They could all sit down and enjoy their food, contemplating the murder of Joseph for dessert. It's worse. Genesis chapter 42, verse 21, describes the conviction of sin that they ignored at that moment. In that passage, the brothers say this: "Looking back, we are truly guilty concerning our brother, for we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear." When Joseph was cast into that pit, he pleaded with his brothers. Can you hear the voice of Joseph saying, "I'm so sorry, I've been such a jerk. I think my arm's broken. Can you guys help me? Please, please don't leave me down here." What do the brothers say? "Pass the salt." That's what the brothers say. That's cruel. It's heartless.
Not only does it show us the heartlessness of the brothers, here's what else it shows us: It shows us that Joseph was a normal man. Look what we're going to be talking big about Joseph. Just gonna get a lot of praise, but he's not Superman. Genesis 42:21 tells us that Joseph wasn't down in the pit going, "Oh, I just love You, Jesus. I just want to commune with You down in the pit." Not at all. He's screaming, "Help! I'm hurt! You guys got to get me out of here! Lower down a rope!" But they didn't care. They didn't listen. They ignored his cries as they ate their meal.
Now, pick it up in the middle of verse 25: "Then they lifted their eyes and looked, and there was 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 profit is there if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother and our flesh.' And his brothers listened." This company of Arab traders, they came from the family of the great uncle, their great uncle Ishmael. They said, "Hey, here's a brilliant idea. We don't have to kill him. We'll just sell him as a lifelong slave to the Ishmaelites. Isn't that a greater after all? He is our brother." And that in that amazing? You know, he's our brother. Let's not murder him. Let's just sell him into slavery. And we'll cover this next week and tell Dad that he's dead. That's the brothers. That's what they did.
So, verse 28: "Then the Midianite traders passed by, and so his brothers pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt." Looking at their in verse 28, the brothers live pulled Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit. Do you have that scene in your mind? The rope gets lowered down into the cistern. Joseph is gone. Finally, finally, as they're pulling on, but Joseph, "Gosh, I am so sorry. I know I've been such a jerk. I'll be better, believe me. You have taught me a lesson. I will never forgive this. You're gonna see a new Joseph out of this. I'm not gonna be that irritating little brother, and I'm not even gonna tell Dad all this stuff you did. No, I won't say a thing." Hey, hey. And before Joseph knows it, he's being taken away with the Ishmaelites, and he can hear the clinking sound of silver for the exchange of money. When they pulled him up out of the pit, he thought he was rescued. But now he goes from one pit to another pit, and he's sold as a slave to Egypt.
We kinda have to end it right here. End it with the idea that the brothers laughed as the Ishmaelites made their way to Egypt. Do you see them waving to Joseph? "Bye-bye, dreamer. It's never gonna happen." I guess that wasn't God's Word. They're laughing, and they probably felt good that they didn't kill Joseph. "Yeah, we're pretty good guys, aren't we? After all, we did let him live. We've got a little pocket money out of it too. No, we're pretty good guys, aren't we?" Joseph makes his way away. The best of all the brothers thought that they had defeated the dream, the revelation from God, but it wouldn't happen.
Now, let me just bring it to a very direct point with you all. There's no reason to kind of dance around this. Some of you have been treated horribly by other people. Some of you have been, by analogy, you've been cast into the pit. Some of you lived with lives filled with abuse. Some of you have had terrible violence practiced against you. Some of you have known up-close horrible treatment. Maybe it's been in the home. Maybe it was some violence committed against you. Maybe even rape. Maybe even robbed. Maybe your life has been derailed just by some cruel person. Again and again, you've been down in the pit, and there's something in your life that haunts you and says, "It's over for me now. It's never going to be what it could have been." I'm here to tell you that just as much as it's true that what Joseph's brothers did against him could not derail God's plan for his life, so God's plan for your life has not been derailed by the evil other people have done against you. It's absolutely true, and you can take great comfort in that. God has not left you at the mercy of other people.
Now, listen, I'm not saying that other people can't hurt you. They can, and they probably have. But God promises He will be Lord of your life. And no matter how terrible it's been in the past, or maybe even in the present, God is mighty and can redeem and restore. And He can even take the evil that's been done against you, and I'm not calling it anything other than evil. God can take it and use it for His glory and use it for good. I don't even know how exactly God does that in and out, but He does it. Because God's Word about Joseph was proved true, no matter what his brothers did to him. God's Word about Jesus was proved true, no matter what others did to Him. And God's Word about you will be proved true, no matter what others do or have done.
Joseph did not have to pretend, you know, "My brothers really care about me. They just have a funny way of showing it." No, Joseph could be real about it. "Those men hate me, and I should be grateful that I'm not dead, but they hate me." Yeah, the same time. See, but God, You are still Lord in heaven. This terrible thing that's happened to me does not mean that You have exited Your throne. Would You exert Your Lordship in my very life? Here's the good news for you: That because of what Jesus did on the cross and in raising from the dead and in being Lord over your life, you are not bound by what others have done to you. Surrender to God's plan, but put your trust in God's plan more than in your dreams. And why don't you see what God will do?
Let's pray together. Father, this, this is big because, Lord, I, there's people here who have lived through a great injustice. They have been the victim of great crimes. Lord, are they, they wonder where You were when they were being thrown into a pit or sold into slavery. Jesus, I pray that just as You showed the triumphing plan of God in every circumstance, and what seemed to be the worst thing in the world, You on a cross, You turned into the greatest thing in the world, the love of God for all humanity. Lord, we need You to work that redemption in our life too. Would You do it by Your presence and by Your power? Lord, please do this. We pray.