Genesis 37 Joseph sold Tim Anderson 8/7/18 We're starting a new sermon series today. No doubt some of you are feeling more relaxed as a result. So we're beginning to look at the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50. Why Genesis 37-50? Well when I wrote the preaching roster last year, the issue of dreams was a live pastoral issue in the church. So I chose a section of Scripture with lots of dreams. I sense that dreams are no longer the issue they were. But I'm sticking with Joseph. I'm always interested in preaching significant passages that I haven't preached before. And let's make no mistake this is a significant passage. It's 14 chapters long. That's almost as long as Mark's gospel. And it's in a foundational book, the first book of the Bible: Genesis. But why spend so much time exploring the story of one man? Is Joseph really that significant in the storyline of the Bible? Well to understand Joseph's significance, we have to move beyond a Sunday School treatment of these passages. Now I have every confidence in our leaders at Trinity kids. They would certainly never do this. But many times in Sunday Schools, the stories of the great leaders of the Old Testament 1
are mined for moral injunctions. So for example, the chapter we are looking at today would become a lesson in the perils of showing favouritism to one of your kids. Now it's not wrong to draw some moral lessons from the stories. And we will do that briefly. But there are two important principles we must observe: 1. We must ask where any story fits in the Bible's big storyline. 2. We must realise that God is the main character in the story. And if drawing moral lessons is all we do, then we've missed those most important principles. So where does Joseph's story fit in the Bible's big storyline? Joseph's great Grandfather was Abraham. And Abraham was given promises by God that shape the rest of the Bible. Genesis 1-11 describes the creation of the world and how people multiply and spread out over the world. And then in Genesis 12, God begins to choose a people to be his very own people. He starts with one man, and that man is Abraham. It is the descendents of Abraham who will form the nation who will be God's own people. Here's the promise that God made to Abraham. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." 2
The three big ticket items of the promise are: land, relationship and descendents. God will give to Abraham many descendents to make him into a great nation. He will have a special relationship with Abraham so that Abraham's name will be made great and the way people treat Abraham, they will be treated by God. And the great nation of Abraham's descendents will be given the promised land to live in. Land, relationship and descendents. That's the promise that should guide our reading certainly of the rest of the book of Genesis. But actually it guides our reading of the first five books of the Bible and indeed the whole Bible. As time goes on, God reveals to Abraham some obstacles that will need to be overcome as God is fulfilling his promise. This is God speaking to Abraham from Gen 15, "Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendents will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.... In the fourth generation your descendents will come back here," So how does God get his people from Canaan where Abraham lived to Egypt where his people would be enslaved? How does God protect the descendents that he promised Abraham from a famine that devastates the whole region? How do the descendents of Abraham achieve a great name and honour among the nations? That is where the story of Joseph comes in. It's a record of God's action 3
in fulfilling the promises he made to Abraham. Joseph is the one who saves Abraham's descendents from starvation. Joseph is the one provides the path for Abraham's descendents to be strangers in a country not their own. Joseph is the one who makes the name of Abraham's descendents great. God's purposes that run through Joseph eventually result in the Exodus, the formation of the nation of Israel and the Messiah who comes from that nation. That's why Joseph is important in the story. It's really not about the perils of favouritism in the family. It's not about cautioning against the arrogance of youth. It's about God working behind the scenes to achieve his promises. But now that we have that straight, Let's look at some details of the story. And what we see is a family split apart by favouritism. Verse 3 tells us that "Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons." Israel is God's new name for Jacob. At a human level we can understand why Jacob loved Joseph more than his other sons. Understand but not excuse. Joseph was born to Jacob from his favourite wife. You'll remember that Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, but he was tricked by Laban into marrying Leah. And so after giving seven years work for Rachel's hand in marriage, he then had to work another seven years to finally get the woman he loved. And Rachel had trouble falling pregnant. Leah had born him sons, both Leah's servant girl and Rachel's servant girl had born him sons. 4
But the wife he loved most had not born him sons. So when Rachel finally bore him Joseph, Jacob treated him as special. He loved him more than the other sons. And the other sons had done things along the way to discredit them in their father's eyes. His eldest son Reuben, who in that culture might have expected to be first in his father's love, had slept with his father's concubine, Bilhah. The next sons, Simeon and Levi, had organised a massacre of the Canaanites in the land. This hadn't pleased their father and had made relations difficult in Canaan for Jacob. So Joseph became the golden haired boy. Jacob had been his own mother's favourite when he was a child. He stole his own brother's birthright as the eldest son. And now he played favourites with his own sons. And he made no effort to hide it. He made Joseph a wonderful ornate robe for him to wear. Well wouldn't that just be the crowning insult for his brothers? Not only was their brother the favourite, but every time they looked at him, they were reminded of it. But then Joseph had dreams. And you don't need to be a master of dream interpretation to work out what his dreams indicated. "We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field. My sheaf stood upright. Your sheaves bowed down to mine." You don't need an app on your phone to work out what that means. Hey listen brothers. 5
One day you are all going to bow down to me. And there was another dream. And the meaning was just as clear. This time not only his brothers but also his mum and dad would bow down to him. And I guess if you are Joseph's family at this point, you have two options. You can believe that you have an arrogant 17 year old boy in front of you, whose self importance has puffed up idle notions in his mind. His idle mind is dreaming things that tell him what he wants to hear. Like most 17 year olds, he wants to believe that he's a very important person. The other alternative is to believe that these dreams have been sent to Joseph by God, and that God has some special plans for this young man. It's pretty clear which way Joseph's brothers went on that question. And because of their anger at their father's favouritism, they couldn't consider the question objectively. But we can. Is there anything at this point to lead us to believe that these dreams might be from God? Well we know that God does send dreams. The Bible is littered with examples of God giving people messages by dreams. We know that God sends dreams to people he wants to communicate with. We don't find examples in the Bible of people who diligently write their dreams down for years, convinced that they will be led by God each step of their life by their dreams. What we do find are people who don't ask God to send them dreams, 6
finding that they have dreams at particular moments. And those dreams come at times that have special significance for God's plans for the world. Joseph had dreams because he was heir to the promise God had made to Abraham to take his people to live in a foreign nation. God was going to fulfil his promise to Abraham through his great grandson Joseph. Pharaoh had dreams not because he was a might ruler and so deserved direct communication from God, but as a way of putting God's man Joseph in a position of influence in the land. Nebuchadnezzar had dreams not because he was a mighty ruler, but as a way of putting God's man Daniel into a position of influence in the land. God sends dreams on odd occasions not when people ask for them but when God has something he wants to communicate at a particular and special time. So is there anything that should have tipped off Jacob and his sons that Joseph's dreams might be a message from God? Well only this one thing. They knew what family they were part of. Jacob knew that Abraham was his great grandfather. He knew the promises that had been made to Abraham by God. He had had God speak to him personally through a dream of angels ascending a stairway to heaven. And so it should have been a very live possibility for him that these dreams of his son were sent from God. His was not a normal Joe Average family. They were the family of promise. 7
A family God had spoken to in various direct ways including dreams for 3 generations. And to give Jacob his due, it seems he at least did entertain the possibility that these dreams might be from God. Verse 11 tells us, "His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind." Keeping the matter in mind is the same language that is used for Mary when she treasured things up things that were said to her when Jesus was born. That's enough about the dreams. What about God's action in the story? Do you notice nothing gets in the way of God's purposes? God has purposed to raise up a saviour for his people. That's what Joseph is. If it wasn't for Joseph, they would have all starved to death. So Joseph is a saviour. Now what to people do when God raises up a saviour? Inevitably they try to kill him. The brothers here plot to kill Joseph. Heaps of the prophets in the OT are despised rejected or murdered. This is what Jesus said in Lk 11. "God in his wisdom said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute." And of course that culminated with the Lord Jesus. It's striking as you read Mark's gospel. They are already plotting to kill him in chapter 3. 8
It culminates with Jesus but it doesn't finish with Jesus. God's people always reject the saviours God sends. 11/12 of the apostles were killed. Paul was killed. They tried to kill Martin Luther. Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake. God's people always reject the saviours God sends. But no one frustrates God's plans. God raised up Joseph to save his people from starvation and to make their name great. And it looks like God's plans will be frustrated. Joseph's brothers want to murder him. Only the last minute intervention of Reuben keeps the others from shedding his blood. And so he ends up down the bottom of a dry well instead. But look how God is in control of the situation. They sit down to have a bite to eat and consider what to do next. And what should appear over the horizon? A caravan of Ishmaelite traders. And where might the caravan of Ishmaelite traders be headed? Lo and behold, they are going to Egypt. Isn't that a funny coincidence? God has planned to send his people to Egypt to be enslaved. And he needs to send his Saviour in advance so that they won't be wiped out in a famine. And these Ishmaelite traders appear over the horizon at just the right time and they are going to just the right place, and Joseph's brothers have just enough sympathy with him not to kill him, but to sell him instead. What a remarkable set of coincidences! They are of course not coincidences. 9
God has everything under his sovereign control. One thing Christians sometimes don't realise is that God's plans are no more hindered by the foolishness of his friends than the opposition of his enemies. Jacob's favouritism that tore his family apart. His sons, the great leaders who would become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, they are so poisoned by bitterness and resentment, that they resort to kidnapping and very nearly murder. Jacob and his sons are God's people not his enemies. They aren't intentionally fighting against God's promises to Abraham. But what they do certainly doesn't look like it's aimed to help. But in the end, God uses everything, even the bad things to further his purposes. Sometimes Christian people believe that something they have done has permanently upset God's plans for them or their family. You might have done something dreadful. I don't know. But whatever it is, it can't possibly derail God's plans. God will work everything together for his glory. And when you turn back to him and confess your sin he totally accepts you. There's no conditional acceptance with Plan B second class blessings. When you trust in God and follow his ways, he will work all of your experiences together, even the bad ones, for his glory. But there is a rider. 10
We don't always know what God is up to. Think about Joseph at the bottom of the well. Despised and rejected by his brothers. Crying out for his life to be spared. Spared by those who in a few years he would save. Did he understand what God was up to having him thrown to the bottom of a well? Did he think to himself, Oh this is OK, it's all part of God's marvellous plan to save his people? Of course he didn't. Whatever he thought about his dreams of his brothers bowing down to him at that point, it wasn't confident and serene trust. This is how his brothers described it in Chapter 42, "We saw how distressed he was, when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen." Joseph at the bottom of the well was just like you or I would have been. Crying for mercy. Thinking everything had gone wrong. And completely unaware that God had a caravan of Ishmaelite traders just over the horizon. So that's a challenge to us, to accept that God does have everything in his hands. Even when it looks to us like everything is out of control. Let's pray to God, and tell him that we trust him. Even when we can't understand what he's doing. 11