Introduction:
A. This morning I want to start a new sermon series on the life of the Old Testament person named Joseph.
1. As we will see, he is a man of great faith, integrity and grace.
2. You might be surprised to know that the story of Joseph occupies more space in the book of Genesis than any other single individual in that book.
3. More space is given to Joseph’s story than to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, or even his own father, Jacob.
4. So we must realize we will not be looking at some obscure, lesser individual, but we will be looking at one of the ancient patriarchs whose presence casts a sizeable shadow across the colorful landscape of Jewish history and across God’s plan of redemption.
B. As you know, God constantly uses the lives of Bible characters to teach us, to encourage us and to even warn us.
1. Who can forget the lives of Moses, or David, or Paul, or Esther or Ruth.
2. Our Scripture Reading today reminds us: For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)
3. 1 Corinthians 10 has a similar lesson to teach us.
a. Verses 6 and 11 say: Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did…These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. (1 Cor. 10)
b. The “these things” in verses 6 and 11 refer to the first five verses of that chapter, which point back to the people of Israel and to some of the things they endured and experienced.
4. What a treasure it is to be able to study the lives of God’s people and to learn valuable lessons from them.
5. Some of the characters are good / good examples. Others are good / bad examples.
6. We will see that Joseph is one of the good / good examples; perhaps one of the best!
C. Let’s start with a brief overview of Joseph’s life. His biography falls neatly into three segments.
1. The first segment is birth to Seventeen Years (Gen. 30:24-37:2).
a. During this time Joseph’s family was in transition – everyone was unsettled and on the move. A low-level of antagonism was brewing in his family during this period.
2. The second segment is Seventeen to Thirty Years (Gen. 37:2-41:46).
a. During this second segment, Joseph reaches young manhood. His life takes some very hard turns as he faced enslavement, unfair accusations, and imprisonment.
3. The final segment is Thirty Years to Death (Gen. 41:46-50:26).
a. Joseph’s last 80 years are years of prosperity and reward under God’s blessing. He had the power and opportunity to get even with his brothers, but he forgave and blessed them instead.
I. The Story
A. In order to get started into the life of Joseph, we really need to know something about the family he was born into.
1. Being a part of a family is an interesting part of life, isn’t it?
2. There’s an old saying that says: “You can pick your friends, and some other things, but you can’t pick your family.”
3. No one gets a choice about what family they get to be born into.
4. I like what Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian said, he said, “If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you'll be going, ‘you know, we're alright. We are dang near royalty.’ ”
B. Joseph was born into a pretty dysfunctional family.
1. Joseph’s father is the patriarch named Jacob.
a. Jacob’s other name is Israel which means “God strives” – a name given to him after he wrestled with God, and clung to Him for a blessing.
b. The name Israel is a significant improvement over his original name, Jacob, which literally meant “deceiver.”
2. Jacob was born into a family where a lot of favoritism was shown.
3. Jacob’s older twin brother, Esau, was favored by his dad, while he was favored by his mother.
4. And as you might recall, Jacob cheated his brother out of his birthright and his blessing – the later with the help of his mother.
5. Unfortunately, Jacob didn’t learn anything helpful from his family’s mistakes of favoritism.
C. Joseph was born into a family with a lot of rivalry and favoritism.
1. Jacob fell in love with Rachel and worked for 7 years for Rachel’s father in order to be able to marry her.
2. Unfortunately, for everyone, Rachel’s father tricked Jacob, and he slipped Rachel’s older and less appealing sister, Leah, in as Jacob’s bride – so he married the wrong woman.
3. As you might expect, Jacob was not happy about this, but Rachel’s father agreed to give him Rachel also, but he had to work another 7 years for him.
4. Leah, the unloved wife, began to have children for Jacob immediately. Over the next 10 years, or so, Leah bore Jacob 7 children – 6 sons and one daughter.
5. Rachel, however, was barren, which was the greatest stigma for a woman of her culture.
6. As a result of Leah and Rachel’s competition for Jacob’s affection and for motherhood, Jacob also had four other sons by his wives’ handmaidens.
7. So Jacob had 11 children, but none of them had come to him from his beloved Rachel.
D. Finally, after all of this time, God opened Rachel’s womb and she had a son whom she named Joseph.
1. Joseph means “add to me,” or “may He (God) add.”
2. Rachel was basically saying, “May the Lord give me another son.”
3. And so Joseph was born when Jacob was an older man, and since he was born to Jacob’s favorite wife, he was immediately and automatically the favorite son.
4. Sadly, God did give Rachel another son, but she died while giving birth to him.
5. As she was dying, she named him Ben-oni which means “son of my trouble,” but Jacob named him Benjamin which means “son of my right hand.” Slight improvement!
E. Another sad, but important thing we learn about Joseph’s dad, was that he was a passive father.
1. When his only daughter, Dinah was raped, Jacob did nothing about it, which forced her brothers to take matters into their own hands.
2. Her brothers devised a plan that allowed them to slaughter all the men of the city where the violation took place.
3. When Jacob heard about what they had done to retaliate, he was angry.
a. He wasn’t angry about what had been done to his daughter, nor was he angry about the slaughter of incents, rather he was concerned about his public relations with the rest of the people in the land.
4. Another sign of his passivity occurred when he discovered that his firstborn son, Reuben, had committed incest with Bilhah one of his father’s concubines.
5. What did Jacob do about it? Nothing…at least not at the time, however, when he was dying and his sons were brought in for his blessing, he didn’t give much of a blessing to Reuben.
6. He basically said, “Reuben, you are wild and reckless, and you committed a shameful act. Because of this you will no longer excel in honor and power as the firstborn should.”
F. So, this was the family into which Joseph was born.
1. From this little bit of background, we can begin to understand the deception, the rivalry and jealousy, and the anger and rebellion that were rampant within the ranks of Jacob’s boys.
2. And as we turn to the text in Genesis 37, we understand and in some ways are not surprised, about what is about to happen to Joseph.
G. Let’s start reading Gen. 37 at verse 2: This is the account of Jacob. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. (Gen. 37:2-11)
1. Sadly, Jacob did nothing to hide his favoritism, and Joseph unwisely flaunted his privilege.
2. Jacob gave Joseph this richly ornamented robe – it was one with long sleeves to the wrists and was full-length to the ankles.
a. Needless to say, this was not a garment for working.
b. It would be like wearing a tuxedo to do yard work, or a mink coat to do welding.
c. Coats like these were signs of nobility, and by giving it to Joseph his father was basically saying, “You can wear this beautiful garment because you don’t have to work like your brothers.”
3. I doubt that Joseph really understood everything that was happening in his life.
a. As a teenager, most of us would have acted just like him if we were that privileged.
b. He seemed to enjoy being the tattle-tale – giving his father bad reports about his brother.
c. And then when he had those dreams, he couldn’t wait to share them with the rest of the family.
d. Joseph was at the very least naïve, and at the worst very self-centered and arrogant.
4. Tragically, Joseph’s brothers had come to despise their younger brother so much that they could not even speak a kind word to him.
a. Try to imagine the mounting pressure in that home.
b. It was a giant powder keg on the verge of explosion.
H. Let’s pick up our reading at verse 12: Now his brothers had gone to graze their father's flocks near Shechem, and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.”
“Very well,” he replied.
So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron…(Joseph got there and could not find his brothers. He met a man who told him were his brothers were so off he went again.)
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we'll see what comes of his dreams.”
When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let's not take his life,” he said. “Don't shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the desert, but don't lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the richly ornamented robe he was wearing - and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it. (Gen. 37:12-23)
1. One wonders what Jacob was thinking at this point – or if he was thinking at all!
a Was he totally oblivious to the situation?
b. How could he have avoided seeing the seething hatred and jealousy in his own household?
c. How could he have no sense of the danger into which he was sending his favorite son?
d. Joseph also should have had a sense that this assignment of his father’s might not be best.
2. You talk about hostility – as soon as they saw Joseph coming, the brothers’ immediate reaction was: “It’s the dreamer! Let’s kill him!”
3. Interestingly enough, Reuben, the eldest who is not known for his character, is the one who steps in and tries to save his brother.
4. Notice the first thing they did when they grabbed him – they removed the robe.
a. That hated robe, the symbol of favoritism, was the first thing to go.
5. I think the coldest part of all is that the next verse says that they sat down and had lunch.
a. All their anger and hostility had made them quite ravenous.
b. Isn’t it amazing that there appears to be no guilty conscience among them.
c. “Let’s kill Joseph!” “No, let’s just throw him in a cistern and let him die a slow, lonely death.” “Now let’s eat, I’m starving!”
I. Joseph wasn’t in the cistern long, let’s pick up reading again with verse 25: As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.
Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn't there! Where can I turn now?”
Then they got Joseph's robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood. They took the ornamented robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son's robe.”
He recognized it and said, “It is my son's robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”
Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.” So his father wept for him.
Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard. (Gen. 37:25-36)
1. Does a chill run up your spine when you read what these men did to their own brother?
2. When they see an opportunity to make money off their brother, they say, “Let’s not kill him – after all he is our own brother – rather, let’s make some money by selling him into slavery.”
a. With family like that…who needs enemies!
3. They turned their young brother over to a group of total strangers, who were obviously not good men.
4. Then they took the robe and soaked it in blood and took it to their father.
5. Notice the distain in their voices as they don’t even mention their brother’s name, rather they ask their father, “Could this be your son’s robe?”
a. Not “Joseph’s robe.” Not “our brother’s robe?” Rather “your son’s robe.”
6. When Jacob saw the bloody evidence, he jumped to their desired conclusion – His beloved son was killed by ferocious animals. (There was no C.S.I. to check the D.N.A. )
7. Just one more deception and one more act of hatred in a family filled with both.
8. Meanwhile, Jacob grieved while Joseph ended up as a slave in Egypt.
9. In an instant Joseph went from favored, privileged son to lowly, helpless slave.
10. Lord willing, that’s where we will pick up the story next week.
II. The Application
A. Let’s briefly step back from the story and bring to mind several lessons that we can learn.
B. First of all, there’s a lesson here for us about passivity – we must avoid passivity.
1. When we notice that things aren’t as they ought to be, we should consider what we can do about it.
2. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done, or nothing that we should do, but other times there is some course of action that we should take.
3. To know that we should do something that is within our power to do, and to not do it, is sinful. (James 4:17)
4. As a parent, Jacob did many things he should not have done, and he didn’t do many things that he should have.
a. I should have added another separate lesson, but I’m just going to throw it in here.
b. We learn from Jacob and Joseph the damage that is done by favoritism.
c. Parents must not show favoritism to any of their children – it is so destructive.
5. We must realize that the decisions we make affect not only ourselves, but all those who care about us.
6. The course of actions that we choose or fail to choose may affect our children, grand-children and even great-grandchildren.
7. Jacob’s mistakes with his children had tragic long term effects, and so will ours.
8. With God’s help we can do the right things and avoid doing the wrong.
9. With God’s help we can be active and pro-active, rather than passive or reactionary.
C. A second lesson that stands out to me is that we can learn to be faithful regardless of our family situation.
1. In truth, there are no perfect families, right?
2. Certainly, there are families that are better than others, or healthier than others, but none that are perfect.
3. Ultimately, God holds us accountable for ourselves. He doesn’t hold us accountable for our families of origin.
4. It might be convenient to try to use our family as an excuse for our disobedience, but God won’t let us.
a. Excuses like: My parents divorced when I was young, or my father was an alcoholic, or I was abused as a child, may all be true and painful, but they don’t excuse us from personal responsibility for our own lives of service to the Lord.
5. In truth, God understands our particular circumstances, and He wants to help us rise above any negative influences that may have come into our lives from family, or from elsewhere.
6. As a matter of fact, God specializes in changing us and conforming us into His image, no matter what we have done or what has happened to us.
7. God can bring healing and forgiveness into our lives so that we can start over at any point.
8. I’m so thankful that God has the power to enable us to be faithful regardless of our family situation or painful experiences.
D. One final lesson that stands out to me is the danger of anger and jealousy.
1. I’ve always liked the saying – anger is only one letter away from danger.
2. Scripture warns us about not harboring resentment and anger in our hearts.
3. When we do so, we give the devil a place to work.
4. Many experiences in our lives do result in anger or jealously, and God gives us the ability to feel these emotions for a reason – they are signs that something isn’t right and needs to be addressed.
5. But God does not want us to allow anger and jealousy to remain in us and begin to simmer until we reach a boiling point.
6. When not dealt with properly, both anger and jealousy have the ability to explode and destroy everything precious to us.
7. But with God’s help, we can address what is making us angry or jealous, and allow those emotions to serve us well, rather than allow them to destroy us and others.
E. We’ll, I’m excited about this study of Joseph.
1. His life of faith, integrity and grace are worth studying and imitating.
2. The same God who was there for Joseph is here for us right now.
3. Let’s put our hope in the Lord and let’s walk closely with the Lord, letting God have His way with us, just like Joseph did!
Resources:
Joseph: A man of Integrity and Forgiveness, by Charles Swindoll, Word Publishing, 1998
Genesis, by Derek Kidner, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, Inter-Varsity Press, 1967
Genesis, by James Burton Coffman, A.C.U. Press, 1985
Remodeling – Dealing with an Imperfect Family, Sermon by John Hamby, SermonCentral.com
Exiled for Good, Sermon by Dean O’Bryan, SermonCentral.com
The Possible Dream, Sermon by Victor Yap, SermonCentral.com
