Obedience Like Joseph

Obedience Like Joseph

Tim Olsen

Transcript

Well, good morning. How are we doing this morning? Yeah, it is good to be with you guys. I love that song. I got the privilege last week of getting to preach at our church that I'm at right now, Midtown, Downtown. And we played that right before I walked out.

And so to get to walk out and preach following that song again is just such good. Good for my heart. Hopefully good for your hearts. That beautiful mystery of the gospel, right? That Jesus, the Savior of the world, the Lord of all creation, would humble himself and come as a child. So we celebrate in this season.

Excited to be opening God's Word with you this morning. If you have a Bible, go ahead and get to Matthew 1. We're going to be in Matthew 1 and 2 a little bit today. Like Chet said at the very beginning, my name is Tim. I'm currently on staff over at a church downtown called Midtown Fellowship. And they are sending myself and my wife and a team of about 40 individuals out to the east side of Charlotte, North Carolina, to plant a church called Citizens Church next summer.

And so we're really excited, really grateful. Some of them are sitting front and center this morning. So I'm trusting they'll bring the amens for me. But really, really glad, really grateful for you guys for making us one of your Give projects, for caring about us, for wanting us to see us be launched out well as a brand new church. But more than anything, I'm excited to open up God's Word with you this morning.

Now we just prayed, but let me pray one more time for us before we dive in. Father God, thank you for your Word. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for Jesus as a baby in the manger, helpless, clinging to Mary and to Joseph. God, thank you for Jesus on the cross, who appears helpless, but in the same moment is claiming victory over Satan's sin and death. Thank you that we worship that King.

That we serve and give our lives away for that King who first gave his life away for us. Would you be with us this morning as we open your Word? Would you help us to see what it is that you have for us, to apply what it is we need to apply, to know what it is we need to know, to love what it is we need to love. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

So we're in the second Sunday of Advent, the middle of this Advent season. The season where we look back and we remember and celebrate Christ's first coming. And we look ahead. We look forward to and anticipate the second coming of Christ. This time not as a baby in a manger, but as a King. A risen and ruling and reigning King for all eternity.

And so to do that this year, you guys are looking at different themes from the Gospel of Matthew in the Christmas narrative. And so I have the privilege this morning of talking to you about Joseph. Not colorful coat Joseph, but standing next to Mary in all of your scenes of nativity, Joseph. That's who we're talking about this morning in Matthew chapter 1. So growing up, my family had a tradition where every other Friday night, we would sit down and watch movies together.

So we would order pizza and we would sit down, usually watch some kind of great American film or great American classic. On the other hand, my wife's family was not really big into movies. So they just didn't really watch TV a whole lot. That wasn't their thing growing up. Didn't watch a whole lot of movies. And so when we got married, I found out pretty early on that she had never seen some of the American classics.

I mean, just the films you need to watch if you are going to be a part of this culture and this society. Films like Star Wars. Films like Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings, which I'm told are also books, can neither confirm nor deny if they're books or not. But she'd never seen the movies and that's what I cared about.

And so being the spiritual leader of our family that I was, I decided this had to change, right? And so we sat down over the first year or so of our marriage and we watched through every single one of these movies. And what happens is when you watch through these movies back to back to back to back to back to back to back is that you notice two things. Number one, you notice that all of the plots are basically the same. Hot take. You can argue about it later.

All the stories are the same. They all tell the same story. Hero, villain, kill the villain, you win, right? That's how the story goes. But the second thing you notice in all of these movies is that there is always some secondary or third, some other character that seems like they're not really that important.

They're kind of in the background, kind of off. You're wondering what their deal is, but then you get to the end of the movie and you realize, hey, this person played a pivotal role in the story of the lead character. They're not the lead. They're not the main character. They're not the one that the story is about, but they do something, some sacrifice, some act that helps serve the purposes of the lead character. So in Harry Potter, you have Hagrid, right?

In Star Wars, you have Han Solo. In Lord of the Rings, you have Samwise Gamgee, right? In Chronicles of Narnia, you have Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. I mean, even Anna has her Olaf, right? There's this secondary character that is helping serve the purposes of the lead.

Well, this morning in Matthew 1 and 2, that's what we see with the person of Joseph. So we get when we get to Joseph. Joseph, this man who is not the lead character. The Christmas narrative is not about Joseph. We don't sing all these songs about the risen Joseph. He's not the one in the manger.

He is just a secondary character, but he plays a hugely vital role in the Christmas story. His Acts of sacrifice and obedience to God are huge. He is set to protect Jesus. Baby Jesus, helpless newborn Jesus. And so he has a vital, crucial, wildly important role to play, but he's not the lead character. And that's what we're going to see in the story of Joseph.

We're going to start in verse 18, Matthew chapter 1. And what I want to show us this morning is a pattern. So we're going to look at three different little stories from Matthew 1 and 2. And I want to show you a pattern from the life of Joseph. We're going to start in verse 18, Matthew chapter 1. Here we go.

Scripture reads, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. So reading this story, there might be some confusion, right? Are they married? Are they engaged?

If they're just engaged, why does he have to divorce her? What is, what's going on? So in verse 18, it says that Joseph and Mary were betrothed. So betrothal in this time period is a part of the Jewish custom called kiddushin. And kiddushin means that what would happen is a man and a woman would get legally married. So they would be bound together.

And then they would enter a period, usually a year, of what was called betrothal, where they were set up to be married. By all legal circumstances, they were married, but they weren't married yet. So what would happen is a groom's family, in order to arrange a marriage, that's how it worked in that custom, they would pay a large amount of money to a bride's family for the right for their daughter to marry their son. And so they would pay this large amount of money. And so what they would do is they would enter a betrothal period, a year, a period of about a year, basically to wait and make sure that this woman, who they paid a lot of money for, was morally pure, that she wasn't pregnant, that she was fit to marry in their culture, fit to marry their son.

And so what would happen is they would be set up for this year period, where they were legally married, but they weren't allowed to live together, they weren't allowed to be alone together, and they weren't allowed to sleep together, which my opinion is no thank you to that tradition. Right? So they were married, though. And so in order to break it off, they had to be divorced. So what happens is during this betrothal year, Mary shows up pregnant.

Whereas the text says before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And I don't know how that conversation goes between Mary and Joseph. Right? Would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that one. Right? Mary, who in Luke 1, we know that she was told by an angel, you're going to conceive, and you're going to give birth to a son.

This is God's son. You're going to call him Jesus. So it's found that she is pregnant. She's pregnant by the Holy Spirit. And so she maybe rolls up to Joseph and is like, hey, Joseph, by the way, I'm pregnant. And Joseph's response is, what?

Say it again. And she says, don't worry. Don't freak out. Be calm. It's God's baby. Which if you're Joseph, you shouldn't believe her.

Right? So we think, oh, yeah, people in that custom, people in that culture, they're so superstitious. Of course, he believes her totally. He doesn't believe her. Right? He believes in the supernatural, but he doesn't believe in the superstitious.

He's not just some blind, oh, yeah, totally. God got you pregnant. Totally. Yes. He doesn't believe her. He's thinking clearly.

Verse 19. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. So here's what I want you to notice. Joseph is both just and gracious. Right? So he's just.

He can't just say, Mary, it's not a big deal. He can't just say, you know what? Let's slide it under the rug. No big deal. Let's move past it.

Let's move forward. He can't overlook Mary's sin. He's a just man, but he's also gracious. So he doesn't want to put her to public ridicule, to public shame. Legally, in that time, Joseph has the right to have Mary killed. If he really believed that she was guilty of idolatry, of having this sexual relationship, he could have her killed.

But he's gracious. So he wants to send her away quietly. He's just and gracious. We actually get a beautiful little picture into the character of God here through Joseph. Right? God is both just and gracious.

Right? He's just. He can't let sin go unpunished. He can't go. He can't let sin be swept under the rug or ignored or pushed aside. But he's also gracious.

He doesn't treat us as we deserve. He treats us as he treats Christ based on what Christ has done for us. So Joseph is a just man and a gracious man. And so he resolves to divorce Mary quietly. Verse 20. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

So I don't want us to move past this. Right? One of the dangers of preaching or hearing stories that we're so familiar with from Christmas is that we kind of put this Christmas filter on it. Right? We kind of know, okay, this is what happens. The angel shows up, tells Mary she's going to get pregnant, going to have a baby.

Of course, then the angel shows up to Joseph. He believes her. They go to Bethlehem happily ever after. Right? Let's sing some Christmas carols.

Let's light some candles and have some hot chocolate. Right? That's kind of what we do with Christmas stories. So I want to help you just for a second try to put yourself into the story. So imagine this is happening in 2019.

Right? Imagine this is happening today. Right? Here's this teenage couple from out in the woods, out in this backcountry town, out in the sticks, in the boonies. If I was preaching this at Midtown, I would say, imagine they're from West Columbia. It's a joke.

All right? It's a joke. It's a joke. Imagine they're from Shira, right? Or maybe Gaston or, I don't know, Edgefield. Right?

So imagine there's this teenage couple and they come up to be pregnant. Right? The woman is pregnant. And she has a dream. And she says, guys, don't worry. It's not Joseph's baby.

It's God's baby. And you're like, okay, that's kind of weird. And Joseph, her fiance, doesn't believe her. And so he's like, no, we're not getting married. No way. This is done.

But then he goes to sleep. And he has a dream. And an angel shows up and says, Joseph, you should marry this girl. You should marry her because this is my baby. This is from the Holy Spirit. And so he goes around town and he's like, we're having the wedding.

The wedding is on. This is God's baby. We're doing it. So imagine you're hanging out Friday morning at, I don't know, Hardee's. Right? Getting your bacon, egg, and cheese.

And you hear these people at a table next to you talking about this couple. Mary and Joseph. Joseph, right, these teenagers, right? She's pregnant. She says it's God's baby. What?

He believes her. He says he had a dream where an angel showed up. And what is going on here? Now, take a step further. Imagine you're Joseph. Think about it.

Take a second. Think about it. Imagine you're Joseph. Here's this woman who you're waiting a year of betrothal, of waiting time to enter into marriage together, and then she ends up being pregnant. What's going through your mind? What hopes and dreams of a life that you've built up for yourself with this woman alongside of you?

What pictures of that? What glimpses of that? What dreams of a future that you have for yourself are suddenly shattered in an instant? Every story you had written? Every scenario you had played out in your head? Here's this woman.

You're waiting. You're anticipating this season. And if any of you have been engaged before, you know that season of waiting towards marriage is agonizing in some senses. Right? You're waiting to be united together with this person. And here is Joseph.

And she winds up being pregnant? And she says it's God's child. And I don't believe her. But now I've had this dream. And this angel has showed up to me and said, No, this is from the Holy Spirit. What does he do?

What step does he take? What agony and turmoil is he going through? No wonder the angel shows up. And in verse 20, he says this, Joseph, son of David, do not fear. I love that. Do not fear to take Mary as your wife.

There's so much for Joseph to be afraid of here, right? There's so much at stake. His reputation is on the line, right? Even if he believes her, even if he believes the angel, who believes him? Who believes Joseph, right? Either he's a liar and he's making up this whole it's God's baby thing to get himself out of trouble, to get himself out of the circumstances he's caused, or he's a fool.

And everyone says, how could you marry this woman even after she betrayed you? Even after she was found to be pregnant? If he believes her, if he believes God, who believes him? His good standing in the community. Any good name that he has is on the line. His relationships are at stake.

Rejection from those in his family. Rejection from those in his hometown. His hopes and his dreams are at stake. This life that he has written for himself, whatever that looks like, is totally thrown out the window. He is signing up. If this is true, if this is real, he is signing up to be the stand-in father of God's baby.

His life is never going to look the same. He's giving up his hopes. He's giving up his dreams. He's giving up his reputation and his relationships. But the angel tells him, do not fear.

Do not fear. Have faith that what you're being invited into is from God. It's an invitation for him to step out in obedient faith. Keep reading verse 21. Angel continues. She will bear a son.

And you shall call his name Jesus. For he will save his people from their sins. This is important. I want to make sure you don't miss it. For Joseph, naming Jesus would give him legal rights to being Jesus' father. So that's how it worked in this culture.

The one who names the child is the one who claims legal rights, legal fatherhood, legal authority over this child. And so what the angel is saying is you are to name him. And in other words, for Joseph to name Jesus is for Joseph to claim Jesus. So what the angel is saying is you don't get partial obedience here. That's not an option for you in this scenario. You don't get to just kind of play fill-in.

You don't get to have one foot in to this whole fatherhood of Jesus thing and one foot out. You don't get to just be Mary's husband. You have to jump all in. Obedience requires you saying, no, I'm here. I'm in. You have to step in fully.

For him to name Jesus is for him to claim Jesus. He has to step into full obedience. Verse 22. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. They shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. So here's the pattern I want you to see. God shows up to Joseph. He calls him to do something costly and weighty and that might not make a whole lot of sense.

He invites him into obedience. Joseph obeys and a prophecy is fulfilled. Meaning the purposes and plans that God has move forward. Meaning what God has designed for the world to go, what he has orchestrated, what he has said should happen, does happen. God shows up, calls Joseph to obey. Joseph obeys and God's plan moves forward.

That's the pattern of Joseph's life. I want to show you two other areas, Matthew 2, two other ways we see this playing out. God calling Joseph, Joseph obeying, God's plan moving forward. So the first one is in Matthew 2, verse 13. So Chet talked about this last week.

Jesus is born in Bethlehem and King Herod, King of the Jews, hears there's this child who has been born who is supposed to be King of the Jews. And so obviously he wants to protect his kingdom. He wants to protect his throne. So he's going to have him killed. Wise men show up. We three kings bring the gifts, yada, yada, yada.

Keep going. Verse 13. That's where we pick it up here. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remain there until the death of Herod.

This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt I called my son. Same pattern. God shows up to Joseph, right? Calls him to do something costly and weighty. Tells him, Herod's trying to destroy this child.

He's trying to kill your child. So take Mary, take Jesus, flee to Egypt, which is about 90 miles or so away. So it would have been about a five to seven day journey by foot and by donkey. So let's stay on the Imagine You're Joseph train, right? Keep yourself in this moment, right? God shows up.

He tells you that this woman who you are about to marry is pregnant, but not to worry. It's his child. Do not fear. Take Mary as your wife. Raise Jesus. This is from God.

Right? So if you, imagine you say yes to this. You're like, all right, God, this is changing my whole life, but I'm going to be obedient to you. And so I'm going to step in and I'm going to go for it. If you're anything like me, you would imagine that your life is going to be good from here on out. Right?

After all, you signed up to be the stand-in father for Jesus. Right? You signed up to take this role, to obey God. You said yes to God's plan. He should work everything else out, right? Right?

If I'm going to be the adoptive father of Jesus, I need a couple mil in the bank. I need a big house. Right? I need the latest whatever. I need everything in my life to be good. Right?

I'm taking care of Jesus. We should be protected. We should have angels flying all around all the time. Like, we should be okay. And here you are now finding out, hey, I said yes to God. I said yes to being obedient to him.

And now somebody wants to kill him? Somebody wants to kill my son? Wait a minute. I said yes to God's plan. Why is my life not getting any better? You ever think that way?

You ever have those kind of thoughts? Wait. Wait. Hold on. Hold on a minute. I said yes to you, God.

Like, I obeyed you. Why are you not working things out how I want them to work out? Wait. God, I said yes to your mission. I stood out in faith. I took a chance because I felt like you were calling me to do it.

Why are my circumstances not getting better? In fact, why are they getting worse? We think back on those decisions. Why would I do it again? God, why would I obey you when last time I obeyed you, you didn't turn things out the way I wanted them to turn out. I said yes to you and you made this happen.

You let this happen. You let that person get sick. You let us lose how much money? We do this, right? We think, okay, yes, if I say yes to God, he should just work everything out for me. Joseph says yes to God and now they're on the run.

Right? Somebody's trying to take out Jesus. But Joseph obeys. God's plan moves forward. Let me give you one more. So if they flee to Egypt, Herod has every male child in Bethlehem and the surrounding region under the age of two killed.

Then we get to verse 19. Matthew 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. For those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. When he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.

And being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene. Same pattern. Right? God shows up to Joseph, calls him to take Jesus and Mary to Israel. All right.

They get to go home. Right? Finally, maybe they get to settle in. They get to have a life. He obeys. They start heading that way.

God shows up again and says, nope, not Israel. You've got to go to Galilee. Really? Galilee? So they head to Galilee.

They end up in a city called Nazareth. We notice again God's plan moves forward so that his plan would move forward so that Jesus would be called a Nazarene. And this is really the last we see of Joseph in the story of Matthew. This is kind of it. We get a little glimpse of him in chapter 13 where it's kind of a little quick reference. But that's it.

This is Joseph. Right? This massively, wildly important character in the story of God who serves God, obeys God, sacrifices so much to protect the baby Jesus. Right? Wildly important. And yet he's there for two chapters.

That's it. He plays his role. He plays his part. And then he steps out of the way and Jesus gets put into the forefront. The actual lead. The actual one that we worship and serve and give our lives away for.

And so what I want to show us this morning with our last little bit of time, what I want to show us is that Joseph is not just a character with great historical influence. But he's not someone we just put in our nativity scenes. He's not someone we just mention in a few Christmas carols. He is actually a wildly important example for you and for I of what obedience to God looks like. He's a great example of what obedience to God looks like. And I want to show you three ways.

Three ways. His obedience is an example to us. Three ways. Joseph is an incredible example of faithful obedience to God. See what we can learn from this. Three ways.

Number one, obedience when it doesn't make sense. Obedience when it doesn't make sense. Mary's pregnant with God's baby. What? Flee to Egypt? To Galilee?

Where? What do you want from us? It doesn't make sense. An angel showing up, right? Telling Joseph this stuff doesn't make sense. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes when God calls us to obey him?

Like, hold up. Wait. God, I'm reading your word. And I'm praying. And you want me to do what? You want me to say yes to what?

You want me to say no to what? Now, chances are, right, none of us are going to go home tonight and go to bed. And none of us are going to have a dream where an angel shows up and says, Hey, the woman you're engaged to is pregnant with a baby from the Holy Spirit. Marry her. Call him Jesus. That's not going to happen.

Right? If it does, go back to sleep. You heard it wrong. All right? That's not going to happen. But there are going to be times in our lives where God calls us to step out in faith, to step out in obedience.

And it's not going to make sense. It's not going to make sense. So maybe for some of you, that looks like God calling you to give up that promotion. Or to say no to that raise so that you can actually stay in this city and build deep roots with your church family. For others of you, sacrifice that doesn't make sense looks like, hey, I'm really tired tonight and I would much rather watch Disney Plus or Netflix. But instead, I'm going to go and I'm going to invest in my community group.

I'm going to open up God's word with them. I'm going to love them. I'm going to serve them. For some of us, it looks like, all right, this doesn't make sense to give away money with zero financial return on my investment. But God's kingdom is bigger than me.

So I'm going to use what he has given me. For some of us, it looks like, wait, I'm supposed to parent my kid that way? I'm supposed to make that sacrifice for my family? I don't get it. I don't understand. And for some of us, obedience, when it doesn't make sense, looks like finally opening up and sharing that deep part of us that we would never tell anyone about ever.

Because we know God invites us into freedom. He invites us to be fully known and fully loved by him and by his people. Obedience doesn't always make sense. God calls us to do stuff that our rational minds would butt up so hardly against. Right? And say, why would I do that?

Why would I say yes to those things? Why would I say no to those things? God, why would you ask me to do that? Why would you ask me to step in in that way? Because this is how obedience so often works. I've been getting a firsthand glimpse of this with our Citizens Church core team.

This is not a story to set us up as the hero. I would rather talk about Jesus the whole time, but I feel the need to talk about it. So our team, our team with Citizens is a group of about 40 or so individuals. And they are the most normal folks. We are the most normal folks you've ever met in your entire life. You can meet them.

A lot of them are sitting on the second row. And you'll know, yeah, they're really normal. Like they're really average. We have baristas. We have some college students. We have some future pharmacists, some future nurses.

We have people that work in insurance. It doesn't get any more normal than working in insurance, right? It just doesn't. And there are people that believe that God has called them to something. That God has said, hey, would you step out in faith? And for most of them, 99% of them, it doesn't make sense.

Right? So in our culture, in our society, we move somewhere new for one of three reasons. We move for family. We move for a new job. Or we move for cheaper cost of living, right? That's generally the three reasons why we move.

A lot of the people on our team are actually moving away from family to go to Charlotte. They're giving up jobs that they like with no guarantee of a job. None of them have jobs right now. And for a lot of them, they're going to move into more expensive apartments and more expensive houses because Charlotte is way more expensive than Columbia. It doesn't make sense. It makes zero sense.

And yet they believe that God has called them to something. So they're trying to step out in faith. They're trying to be obedient to the mission of God. And what we see with Joseph is that faithful obedience to God doesn't always make sense. Secondly, obedience when it's costly. Obedience when it's costly.

Joseph ruins his reputation. Just ruins it. Totally derails any plans he probably had for his life. Any hopes and dreams he had. Just totally goes off the rail. Right?

He is signing up to be the stand-in father of God's son. Life is not going to look the same. And Joseph willingly steps into the sacrifice. His reputation, his relationships, his hopes and dreams. He steps out even when it's costly. Here's the reality.

And if you've been following Jesus for any amount of time, you probably feel this. Obedience to God is going to cost you. Just is. Right? Matthew 16. Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, if you want to follow me, take up your cross and be willing to die.

That's what it means to be a Christian. It means to follow the way of our Savior, which the way of our Savior is one of continual sacrifice upon sacrifice upon sacrifice all the way to the cross. So to follow Jesus is to have sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. The call of obedience from Christ is one that is going to cost you. It's going to hurt. It's not always going to feel pleasant.

And that rubs against us because we think, God, I'm following you and you control all things. Why isn't my life getting better? Why aren't things magically just working out for me now? Because the call to obedience is the call to come and die. To give up our lives. To give up what's easy and what's normal.

To sacrifice for the mission of God going forward. Gets us to number three. Number three. Obedience when you don't know the outcome. Obedience when you don't know the outcome. We know the whole story of this, right?

We know the whole Christmas narrative. We're on this side of the Bible. We know who Jesus is. We know the miracles that he does. We know that he goes to the cross. We know he dies but doesn't stay dead.

But he gets up out of the grave. We know all that. Joseph doesn't. When Joseph says yes to the angel in the dream. When Joseph says yes to marrying Mary. He doesn't know how it all works out.

He doesn't know the miracles that Jesus is going to perform. He doesn't know feeding the 5,000. He doesn't know the walking on water. He doesn't know the cross. He doesn't know the empty tomb. Joseph doesn't know any of that.

He is just a dad. Trying to be faithful to the call of God on his life. He's just trying to take one step at a time. Little step by little step by little step. He's just trying to be obedient. He doesn't know how it all works.

And if you're anything like me, that could be one of the most frustrating parts of obedience to God. Right? Because I'll be reading God's word or I'll be praying and I feel like God's called me to something and I want to know, all right, I'll totally say yes. God, I am in on the plan as long as you tell me what the next five steps are. Right? As long as you tell me where we're going when we get there.

Give me the ending. Tell me how this all works out and I'm totally in on your plan. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I'm going, all right, let me make sure I like it first. Let me make sure if I say yes here that it's going to work out how I want it to work out. Let me make sure that everything's going to be okay. God, show me the whole plan.

And I'm about as type A as type A comes. So God, I need 50 step by step. Do this, do this, do this. And an invitation for me and my Christian growth is, no, Tim, little step. Little step. Take a little step.

Take a little step. I tell our core team all the time that we don't know if this is going to work. I tell them all the time, like we're going to Charlotte. We're trying to plant this church. We think God's called us to do it. I don't know if we're going to fail or not.

We have a process that we take our people through before they join our core team, our first group of members. And I tell every single one of them, I'm not a salesman, I'm a pastor. So I tell every single one, I don't know. We could have a thousand people and plant 50 churches or we could have 10 people and not be able to pay our bills and close our doors within a year. I don't know. And for a lot of these conversations, I actually go back to a conversation I had with Chet, one of your pastors back, I think 2012, 2013, something like that.

We were hanging out at Cafe Strudel. And I remember that because he taught me about all you can drink coffee, which is wonderful. Glad for that. And so we're sitting down at Cafe Strudel and Mill City's just kind of really starting to get rolling at that point. I think we were kind of talking church planting. He knew that's what I wanted to do eventually.

And so I remember him asking me this question and it still stuck with me today and I still share it with our core team all the time. But he asked me, he said, Tim, how do we know if Mill City is a failure? Like, how do we know if we failed? Then he asked me some, I think, rhetorical questions, but I might have answered them. He said, Tim, if 10 years from now, if we're huge, if we've blown up, but we've never planted another church, we've never reproduced ourselves as a church, have we failed? I'm like, all right, I don't think so.

It doesn't feel like failure. He said, all right, let me give you another one. If three years from now, we've reached 500 people and we're huge and we've blown up, but we haven't baptized a single person or a single person hasn't come to faith. Not a single person's met Jesus. Are we a failure? Maybe, I don't know.

These are tricky questions, Chad, I don't know. All right, let me ask you one more. If in a year from now, we have zero money in the bank, nobody comes. We close our doors and come crawling back to Midtown. It's what seems like failure. Are we a failure?

All right, this one I know. Yes, yes, you're a failure. Got it. I know this answer. And he looked at me and I still remember this to this day. He looked me in the face and he said, Tim, we are stepping out in faith to what we feel like God has called us to do.

So it actually doesn't matter. We're already successful. It doesn't matter. 100 people come to know Jesus. Nobody comes to know Jesus. We have stepped out in faith and what matters in the kingdom of God is faithful obedience.

So I tell my team all the time, I don't know. I don't know. This could be the worst thing we've ever done. This could be a terrible decision, but we feel like God has called us to do it. And so we're just going to be faithful. We're going to work really hard.

We're going to evangelize like crazy. We're going to serve the poor. We're going to love our neighbors. We're going to do semi-decent gatherings and sing and preach God's word. And we're going to talk about Jesus and we're going to invite people to respond. But God does all of it.

And we just try to be faithful. So the invitation for all of us this morning, Mill City Church, all of us this morning is God is inviting you into faithful obedience. And I don't know if for you, it's one specific thing. Maybe that one thing in all of your prayer time, you just keep wrestling with God about that. He just keeps saying, do this, do this, do this. And you keep, I don't want to.

That feels scary. That feels weightier. Maybe it's that one thing he keeps calling you to give up, to say no to, to push away. Maybe for you, it's just a general call towards maturity, a general call towards, you know that when you read scripture and you look at your life, they don't match up and you don't care. So maybe for you, the invitation to obedience is to love God's word and to ask the Holy Spirit to bring conviction over your life, to step in, to speak.

So I don't know, I don't know if it's a specific thing, I don't know if it's a general thing, but here's the good news for us this morning and here's where I want to, I want to land us. Here's the good news for all of us. What God invites us into, Christ has already done. What God invites us into, Christ has already done. That's the story of Christmas. Right?

God himself stepping out into humanity. Right? Taking on flesh, becoming a child, born of a woman, born in a manger, willingly stepping and lowering himself all the way to go lower, even still to the cross. And that doesn't make sense. Right? That doesn't make sense.

On a surface level, that does not make sense. No other worldview or world religion has God stepping down to man. Every single other one has man trying to get themselves to God. But here's God, God himself, creator and controller and ruler of the universe, taking on flesh and lowering himself to become a man. It doesn't make sense. It's costly.

Right? It's costly. Jesus gives up his life, faces an agonizing, brutal, torturous death, physically, emotionally, spiritually, being forsaken by the Father. He experiences such a cost. Grace is free, salvation is free, but it was costly. It cost Jesus his life.

But here's the difference between him and us. Jesus knew the outcome. Right? Jesus knew the outcome. Jesus knew that the cross was not the end of his story. Jesus knew the cross was not the end for him.

He knew three days later he was going to get up out of the grave and be risen and ruling and reigning forever. So what that means for us, church, what that means for us is that every act of faithful obedience, every step of faith, every act of sacrifice actually makes perfect sense in the kingdom of God. Right? Because as we think about, as we learn to fall in love with, as we are changed by the power of the Holy Spirit in light of the person and work of Jesus, it actually makes every sacrifice in light of his ultimate sacrifice make perfect sense. So why wouldn't we give our lives away?

Why wouldn't we step out in faith? Why wouldn't we obey? It actually makes it all not that costly. It hurts. It's weighty in the moment, but we know we anticipate and we expect an eternal reward. Right?

That one day Christ is going to return and he's going to make all things new. That is a guarantee. And we know that. We know the outcome. We might not know it here. We might not know how this specific scenario or this specific circumstance turns out, but we know that one day Christ is going to return and make all things new.

And we get to worship him and celebrate him forever. Here's where I want to end us. None of us are the heroes of the story. So that's the beginning. Mill City, you're not the heroes. Citizens Church Corps team, not the heroes.

I'm not the hero. None of us are the hero. Joseph's not the hero. Jesus is the hero of the story. He's the one we sing about. He's the one we worship.

He's the one we proclaim. He's the one who gave it all away. And so in response, we give it all away in return. He is the one who is worth it. All we're called to do is to step in and play our role of faithful obedience, however small it might be in the kingdom of God. We're called to step out in faith because he's worth it.

He's worth it. He makes it all worth it. Let me pray for us. God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the manger, for him lowering himself, taking on flesh, becoming a human. Thank you that, and in one sense, it doesn't make sense at all.

Why would you lower yourself? Why would you take on flesh? Why would you go to the cross, the cross that we deserved? And on the other hand, we see the bigger picture, that you are accomplishing our salvation. that through the sacrifice of Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, we have been given a way to know you and to love you and to walk with you, to celebrate you forever. God, so would you help us every step of obedience you're calling us into, every act of faith you're calling us into, big or small, in every way that it feels uncertain, in every way that it doesn't make sense, in every way that it feels costly, and that it hurts and that it's burdensome.

God, would you help us? Would you help us remember, and not only remember cognitively in our minds, not only remember as a fact, but remember deep inside of our souls that love of Christ that took him to the cross, that makes every sacrifice, makes every act of faith, makes every act of obedience totally worth it, and make total sense. God, we only love because you loved us first. We only follow you because you sent Jesus first. God, it's all you. We're just responding.

I was to remember this Christmas, this season of Advent, how beautiful and wonderful and crazy it was that Jesus came. that never ceased to be good news for us today, in this season, and every day. We love you. Praise things in Jesus' name. Amen. As the band's coming back up, we're going to move into a time of communion. This is a time of response where we actually get to celebrate each and every Sunday what Christ has done for us, to remember his ultimate sacrifice on the cross, on our behalf.

And so, take a piece of bread, which represents his body, we dip it in juice, which represents his blood, remembering and celebrating that if you are in Christ, if you are a believer, if you trust him, that this is for you, that he has died to make a way for you to be ransomed to himself. If you're not a believer, instead of taking communion, we invite you to take Christ, to believe and trust in his sacrifice for your forgiveness of sins that you can live forever with him. So let's take a second and we're going to pray and then we're going to respond through singing and communion. Matthew Chouclette Buckingham

Joseph and His Brothers

Joseph and His Brothers

Chet Phillips

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It's good to see you all this morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab a Bible and go to Genesis chapter 42. If you grab one of our blue Bibles, that'll be on page 21. We've been walking through the book of Genesis.

We are now in the section on Joseph, and so we are talking specifically about Joseph. We've been following along with his story. We have, today we're going to kind of finish this story up. So usually it says a number and then like a colon and then a few other Numbers. And that's chapters 42 through 47. So today we've got a lot of work to do, but we won't read all of it.

Some of it will be summarized. I would encourage you to read all of it. But we are going to be kind of finishing up, in large part, the Joseph story. And then next week we will look at Jacob blessing his sons. And then the following week we will kind of end Genesis, see the kind of the summary idea of Genesis and how that's not just the summary idea of Genesis, but in some ways it summarizes the entire Bible. And then we will close Genesis, not to open it again for quite a while.

And thankful for the time we've spent in it and thankful to be talking about something else. So we've been walking through it. I think it's been really good, but we are walking in Joseph and his story right now. And we're going to see that Joseph's, a lot of his storyline, a lot of what we've seen God at work in is kind of coming to a head. It's kind of coming to the intense part of his story is going to kind of play out today. And so we're going to get to look at that together.

So let's pray and then we'll start reading. God, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you through how you have revealed yourself. That your word and what we have is that we might see you and know you. To know what you're like and to know how you respond and how you act and what you desire from us and for us. And so we pray that we would grow in that today.

That through your Holy Spirit we would see more clearly who you are and what you're doing and what you have done. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. So if you look at chapter 42, we're actually going to read the two verses right before that. 41, 56 and 57. So it says, So when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians.

For the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain because the famine was severe over all the earth. And so we start off with Joseph in this position of leadership, in this position of power. But that's not how his story began. That's not how it played out. He has, he's Jacob's son.

He was the second youngest. He was the firstborn son of Rachel, Jacob's favorite wife. And he has a one younger brother named Benjamin and he has 10 older brothers. And so because he was the firstborn of Jacob's favorite wife, he was treated differently. He was given a magnificent set of clothes. And it's a big deal.

If you read throughout the Bible, it'll say things like, and then they gave them gold and a change of clothes. And we, we take for granted having a lot of clothes, but they didn't. They had the same clothes and they would wash them and they would clean them. They wear them all the time. And so he gets nicer clothes than the rest of his brothers. And he then has these dreams that his brothers are going to bow down to him.

And he announces them to his brothers and his brothers dislike him. They're not happy with him. And so his 10 older brothers, at some point he goes out to, to see them in the field and they decide, let's kill him. So his 10 older brothers grab him. He's 17 years old. They throw him in a pit because the oldest brother, Reuben says, let's not kill him.

And his plan was just put him in the pit. And Reuben was thinking, I'll come save him later. Reuben's looking for an opportunity to do that. He doesn't get that opportunity because another one of the older brothers, Judah says, let's not kill him and have his blood on our hands. Let's sell him as a slave and have cash on our hands.

And so that's Judah's plan is let's make some money out of this. Let's not just get guilt, but let's get money. And so they pull Joseph out of the pit. They sell him into slavery. And so he is taken down to Egypt. They take his coat of many colors.

They kill a goat. They pour blood on it. They take it to his dad and they say, isn't this Joseph's? Can you identify this coat? His dad says, surely he's been torn to pieces by some wild animal. That was their plan.

Then we follow Joseph. He goes to be a slave in Egypt and he is an excellent slave. He has a good attitude. God's with him. He works hard. He's diligent.

He becomes second in charge over this entire household. And this is going well for him as well as being a slave can go as well as his life. Who's gone from the pit to slavery has been turned upside down as well as it can go. But his master's wife lays eyes on him and then begins to attempt to seduce him. She begins to pursue him. And Joseph spurns her advances.

He does not have he doesn't want to have anything to do with that. He tells her explicitly no. He listens to her daily. Try this. And he says no. And eventually she just had enough.

She grabs him and he just dips out of his clothes and feats don't fail me now takes off. And so she takes his clothes and she tells her husband she lays up next to him and says, this is Joseph's and he tried to assault me. He tried to rape me. And so her husband is captain of the guard takes him right then and throws him in jail. So he goes from most beloved son to pit to slavery and now to prison.

And in prison he could be angry. He could be bitter. He's not. He works hard. He the Lord is still with him. The Lord blesses him.

He becomes second in charge of the prison. And so as as high a ranking position as a prisoner can have, he has it. He cares for the people well underneath under him. And there comes a time when there's the cup bearer and the baker from the king are both in prison and they both have basically nightmares, really vivid dreams that stress them out. He sees them in the morning. They're in prison.

And he sees them and says, why do y'all look sad? Notices their facial expression and cares about them. They tell him his dreams. He interprets them because he's already had dreams and seen that his brothers are going to bow down to him. He interprets these dreams. He says to one of them, you will be lifted up back to your place.

And he says to the other one, you will be lifted up and hanged. And he tells the one who's going back to his position, just don't forget me. And that guy says, I sure won't. And then promptly does. Until several years later, the pharaoh has a dream and he says, oh, you remember when I was in prison? There's a little Hebrew guy who can interpret dreams.

Let's go get him. So they go get him. And in a day, he goes from prisoner to second in charge of Egypt, from prison to palace overnight. And that's where we pick up with him now. Second in charge over Egypt. He was able to interpret the dream that there was going to be five years of plenty, seven years of plenty, seven years of plenty.

Seven years of famine. And they're now into the famine. And so everybody's coming to Egypt because they were able to prepare. And because Joseph led well, they were able to prepare. Everybody's coming to Egypt. And now we're going to see where the story gets interesting.

Chapter 42, as if it hadn't been interesting so far. When Jacob learned, so that's his daddy, that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, why do you look at one another? And he said, behold, I have heard that there is grain for sale in Egypt. Go down and buy grain for us there that we may live and not die. So 10 of Joseph's brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt.

But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph's brother. So that's his younger brother, the youngest one of the family. And Joseph's only full brother. All the other ones are half brothers with his brothers. For he feared that harm might happen to him. Thus, the sons of Israel came to buy among the others who came for the famine in the was in the land of Canaan.

I love how this starts. Jacob says a really good dad phrase. Why are you all sitting around looking at each other? Don't just sit and stare at your brother's face like y'all somehow going to, that ain't going to accomplish anything. Get up and go to Egypt and get us some food. Don't just sit here.

Go get us some food. But he doesn't send Benjamin. He sends his 10 older sons. These are the 10 sons who threw Joseph into the pit. So Joseph is now about to get to stare face to face with those who harmed him.

And Joseph is no longer in the pit. Joseph is the one they have to come get food from. Joseph is in a position of absolute power in Egypt. So let's see what happens. Now, Joseph was governor over the land. He was the one who sold to all the people of the land.

And Joseph's brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground. Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them. But he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them. Where do you come from? He said. They said, from the land of Canaan to buy food.

And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamed of them. And he said to them, you are spies. You have come to see the nakedness of the land. And they said to him, no, my Lord, your servants have come to buy food. We are all the sons of one man.

We are honest men. Your servants have never been spies. Okay, so he sees them and he recognizes them. Now, this makes sense because he gets some context. First of all, they showed up. They were older, so they would have already looked a little similar.

He said he was 17. At this point, he's 32. So he's made a big jump from 17 to 32. You can look considerably different. But his brothers were all older than him.

They're just that same distance, and I can't do math quick. So that amount of older. And he sees them all together, though. He gets some context. So maybe if it was just one, it might have been harder to recognize.

But when all 10 of them walk in, he's like, oh, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Zebulun, Reuben. I know these people. They don't recognize him, but also he is now in a position of authority in Egypt. He has an Egyptian name. He is speaking Egyptian. And there's a good chance he no longer looked like a Hebrew.

They would have changed his hairstyle. He would look Egyptian, most likely. So they walk in. He recognizes them. They don't recognize him. They all bow to the ground, and I bet a cold chill shot through Joseph because he was like, oh, the dream.

Oh, I knew it. So they all bow down, and he recognizes them, but he speaks roughly to them. And you want, we'll see in a second why. There's 10 brothers. Joseph has 11 brothers. And so he doesn't make himself known.

He speaks roughly to them. He calls them spies. And he said to them, no, this is verse 12. It is the nakedness of the land that you have come to see. A weird phrase for us. It just means you've come to spy out how defenseless we are.

And they said, we, your servants, are 12 brothers, the son of one man in the land of Canaan. And behold, the youngest is this day with our father, and one is no more. But Joseph said to them, surprise! No, he didn't. But Joseph said to them, it is as I said to you, you are spies.

By this you shall be tested. By the life of Pharaoh, you shall not go from this place unless your youngest brother comes here. Send one of you and let him bring your brother while you, the rest of you, remain confined. That your words may be tested whether there is truth in you or else by the life of Pharaoh. Surely you are spies. And he put them all together in custody for three days.

So he immediately just, they're arrested. And he says, I want to see your younger brother. Because in Joseph's reckoning, it seems logical that he's thinking through, okay, I was favorited. I was treated differently among my brothers and they hated me for it. And when I was removed from the picture, there is a really good chance that my father began to dote on Benjamin above and beyond anything he ever did with me. And if my brothers were willing to sell me into slavery or kill me, then there's a good chance, potentially, they've killed Benjamin.

He wants to see Benjamin. He doesn't show up with the ten. He wants to see him. They say he's alive. They say his dad's alive. He says, all right, I want to see him.

Also, he is displaying his absolute authority over them. These are ten men that he just, throw them in jail. Now, this is the moment that some of us have been dreaming of in our own lives. To stand face to face with those who have harmed us. With those who have done more in our lives to destroy our lives than anybody else. That his brothers were able to just take him and in a moment, from being a 17-year-old with a lot of life in front of him, were able to just snatch that away from him and send him off to be enslaved in Egypt.

They derailed his life. As much as anybody can derail a life, they did it. And now he's in a position of power. And this is what some of you rehearse in your mind. Ooh, one day. One day they'll see.

One day I'll get to show them. One day I'm going to show up to my high school reunion. One day she's going to come crawling back to me. One day I'll be in the position. I'll have the job. They'll see that this will work out.

And then I'll be able to tell that guy, I'm going to open my own business. I'm going to put them out like this. We rehearse this in our minds. And so if Joseph had been doing that, now it is. Here it is. Laid out in front of him, teed up.

One day I'll be in a position. One day God will let that dream come true. You will bow down to me. And I will have absolute authority. He could have been holding on to this vision that God had given him as a tool for striking his brothers down. He arrests them.

And let's see how this story continues. It says, So he swaps it. A minute ago it was one of y'all can leave. Nine of you have to stay. Now it's nine of you can leave.

One of you has to stay. And we'll verify that this is true. It says, And they did so. Then they said to one another. So they said, Okay, we'll do that.

Then they said to one another. In truth, we are guilty concerning our brother. In that we saw the distress of his soul when he begged us. And we did not listen. This is why this distress has come upon us. And Reuben answered them.

Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood. They did not know that Joseph understood them. For there was an interpreter between them. Then he turned away from them and wept.

So he hears his brothers begin to speak to each other in Hebrew. And what they say is, No, we deserve this. It's caught up to us. The guilt of our brother has found us out. Meaning that they understood and carried for this amount of time this guilt towards their brother. This sin that they had committed.

And they look at each other and go, No, it's caught up to us. And it's this idea of like God ordained karma. That they've done this and eventually it will catch them and that God will make it catch them. And they said, Because we listened to the distress of his soul and didn't listen to it. We heard it, but we didn't listen. And you can imagine Joseph standing there looking at his brothers and hearing them speak in Hebrew to one another about him and how they were wrong and how they were guilty for what they had done.

And remembering the moment when they were pulling him out of the pit and he had been pleading, calling out them each by name. Naphtali, don't do this. Naphtali, do you hear me? Gad, don't do this. Reuben, is Reuben there? Don't do this.

Reuben, you can lead them. You can change this. Judah, Judah, is it you? Can you? Just crying out to him and being pulled out and seeing enslavers that they're now going to sell him to and actually searching the face of his brothers and seeing which ones would make eye contact and look cold towards him. And which of them wouldn't even look at him and which of them has he pleaded with them?

Don't do this. And his soul was in distress and they didn't listen. And here's him speaking about it and it says he weeps. Now we don't know at this point. Why? Is he weeping because he's angry?

Is he weeping because he remembers the hurt of that moment? Is he weeping because he longs for his brothers and he's glad to see that they at least feel guilt? Is he weeping because it's just all the emotions tied up in seeing them and seeing that they've carried this with them? Because this is part of what we want when we want to exact revenge on somebody is we want them to see what they've done wrong. We want them to know it prior to bringing the hammer down. They did not know that Joseph understood them for there was an interpreter between them.

And then he turned away from them and wept and he returned to them and spoke to them. And he took Simeon from them and bound him before their eyes. And Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain and to replace every man's money in his sack and to give them provisions for the journey. This was done for them. Then they loaded their donkeys with their grain and departed.

So he not only gives them the grain they paid for, he gives them their money back and he gives them provisions on top of it. They just load them down. He sends them off. At this point, we're like, what is he doing? Is he just being kind to them? Is this part of his plan?

What's happening? Then they loaded their donkeys with their grain and departed. And as one of them opened his sack to give his donkey fodder at the lodging place, he saw his money in the mouth of his sack. And he said to his brothers, my money has been put back here in the mouth of my sack. At this, their hearts failed them. And they turned trembling to one another saying, what is this that God has done to us?

So they're leaving thinking, let's go get Benjamin and we'll come back. And then on the way, they realize, wait, wait, my money's here. Meaning the Egyptians are going to think we stole. How did this happen? How did we get in a situation where now he thought we were spies and now we've proven dishonest? It says their hearts failed them and they think God did it.

God is orchestrating this to harm us. They go home. They find out that everybody's money. This is the rest of the chapter. I'm just going to explain it. They find out everybody's money is back in their sack.

And they stress out about it. And they tell their father, Jacob, we have to go back with Benjamin. Because we've got to get Simeon set free. And Jacob says, no. Now he loves Benjamin.

It's possible he doesn't fully trust his other sons. We don't know. But he just says, no, like I can't give up Benjamin. Reuben, the oldest, actually looks at him and says, kill both of my sons if I don't bring Benjamin back. And Jacob says, no, if anything happens to Benjamin, my gray hairs will go down to Sheol in sorrow. He just says, it'll kill me.

If he dies, I'll die. So move to chapter 43. Now the famine was severe in the land. And when they had eaten the grain that they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, go again and buy us a little food. But Judah said to him, the man solemnly warned us, saying, you shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.

That again, I love Jacob in the story. It feels like a very fatherly thing to do, to be like, no, we ain't doing that again. I ain't ever having that. Maybe this is just how my house worked. And then they go on. They run out of food.

He comes back and says, go back there and get me some food again. And they're like, what? Well, you don't remember? You don't remember the conversation we had? And so that's what Judah says. He says, the man told us, you're not going to see me.

You're not seeing my face. This is verse three. Unless your brother is with us. If you will send our brother with us, we'll go down and buy food. But if you won't send him, we will not go down.

For the man said to us, you shall not see my face unless your brother is with you. And Israel said, why do you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother? And they, he says, why on earth would you have told him that Benjamin exists? Why has that even come up? Go buy grain, hand them money, come back with grain. Why is this difficult?

Why are you showing up and telling them your life story? What, what on earth? Have you ever even been to a store before? Y'all are 10 grown men. What are y'all doing? That's kind of what he's saying.

And they're like, he asked us a bunch of questions. That's their answer. He said, do you have a father? How old is he? Is he still alive? That he asked, do you have a younger brother?

How are we supposed to know as soon as we said we had a younger brother, he was going to say, well, I want to see him. We thought it was weird. And then it turned out bad for us. So turn, turn, I'm sorry. If you have a blue Bible, turn the page. If not, just keep following along.

We're 43 still. So he says, Judah tells his father, hang it on my head. If Benjamin doesn't come back, I'll be held responsible and I'll bear the guilt forever. Now, a couple of things have happened since last time. Last time, it was Reuben, who Jacob does not have the best relationship with because Reuben actually slept with one of Jacob's wives. We're going to see that show up more and when he blesses him, which the word bless sounds nice.

It's not much of a blessing. Reuben says, hang it on my sons, not on me, which is an interesting thing for him to say. And maybe he thought that was weightier, but he says, you can kill my sons. Judah says, hang it on me. And the other thing is now they don't have any grain. So they're out of food.

So he says, let the guilt fall to me if Benjamin doesn't come back. And if we had not delayed, we'd have already gone and come back twice. So verse 11, their father Israel said to them, if it must be so, then do this. Take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags and carry a present down to the man and a little balm and a little honey and gum and myrrh and pistachio nuts and almonds. Take double the money with you. Carry back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks.

Perhaps it was an oversight. Take also your brother and arise. Go again to the man. May God almighty grant you mercy before the man. And may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.

So he says, we got to have food. Take the food that we do have, the nice things that we do have, some of the, at least some of the stuff that we have. They need grain, but at least some of the stuff that we have. They need a staple crop and none of that was growing. So they said, take some of this as a gift and may God bless you in it.

So the men took this present and they took double the money with them and Benjamin and they arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph. When Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, bring the men into the house and slaughter an animal and make ready for the men are to dine with me at noon. The man did as Joseph told him and brought the men to Joseph's house. And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house. And they said, it is because of the money which was replaced in the sacks the first time that he's brought us in so that he might assault us and fall upon us and make us servants and seize our donkeys.

So they went up to the steward of Joseph's house and spoke with him at the door of the house and said, oh, my Lord, we came down the first time to buy food. And when we came to the lodging place, we opened our sacks and there was each man's money in the mouth of a sack, our money in full weight. So we have brought it again with us and we have brought other money down with us to buy food. We do not know who put our money in our sacks. So the steward, it says he replied, peace to you.

Do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has put treasure in the sacks for you. I received your money. And then he brought Simeon out to them. So, OK, so what happens is they show up. They think, OK, we got Benjamin.

We'll show him Benjamin. We'll get Simeon. We'll buy some grain. We'll pay them back if they want us to pay them back. And we'll get out of here. They show up and a guy comes over and says, the Lord of the place, which whatever his Egyptian name was, Zeph, Hefoph, Muflef, Muflef.

From last week, he wants you to come to his home. And so they're like, uh, so they show up at the house and they're like, this isn't this can't this isn't good. Right. Like, why does he want us to go to his house? They're standing there talking. They're like, it's got to be the money.

He wants to get us in his house. Then he's going to attack us. They're going to enslave us and keep our donkeys. And so they said, let's go tell him. So they walk up to the door.

They don't go inside. And they're like, we brought the money back. You guys don't even we don't need to go in there. We have all the money. And the guy says, I had your money last time. Which means a couple of really cool things about Joseph.

One, he just paid for their grain. He gave them their grain back and blessed them by giving them their money back. He wasn't going to charge them. They're his brothers. He does that. He also didn't just be like, well, I'm the I'm in charge of this.

So here's some free grain. He paid for it. So he pays for it. The guy who's handling it gets the money and he sends their money back. And they say, just come on in. And then it says, Simeon was brought out to them.

So Simeon comes out. I'm sure he's excited because it's been the amount of time it took them to completely run out of grain and decide we're all going to starve to death. Simeon's been there a while. I assume he was really happy. But part of me thinks he walked out like this.

And they were like, yeah, your dad didn't want to send Benjamin. He was like, yeah, OK, that makes sense. It's good to see y'all. Thanks for coming back. Nice to see you, too, Benjamin. Took your sweet time.

So it says they brought Simeon out to them. Then he brought Simeon out to them, 24. And when the man had brought the men into Joseph's house and given them water, and they had washed their feet. And when he had given their donkeys fodder, they prepared the present for Joseph's coming at noon, for they heard that he should eat bread there. So they're taken care of.

They're tending to their donkeys. They're letting them wash their feet. They're hanging out. And all of a sudden, they hear that Joseph's coming. And so they pile up all the little pistachio nuts and, you know, 10 men trying to make something look real nice. We don't know how nice it looked, but not that nice.

And they piled it up. And they were like, yeah, put some gum and some balm there. That'll be sweet. And then we'll be like, here's our present. It's good to see you. And so they pile it up.

So then when he comes home, they could give him his present. When Joseph came home, they brought into the house to him the present that they had with them and bowed down to him to the ground. He inquired about their welfare and said, is your father well? The old man of whom you spoke, is he still alive? They said, your servant, our father is well, and he is still alive. And they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves.

And he lifted up his eyes and saw his brother, Benjamin, his mother's son. And he said, is this your youngest brother of whom you spoke to me? And then he said, God, be gracious to you, my son. Then Joseph hurried out for his compassion, grew warm for his brother, and he sought a place to weep. And he entered his chamber and wept there. So that had to be weird for them.

He says, is this your brother? May God be gracious to you, son. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen somebody start to cry and try to stop it. But their face looked weird. I don't cry very often, but when I am going to cry, I try to stop it and it does not go well. I've done this before.

I start getting like the yips. I'll be like, like, I just, I can't. My face starts doing like this. I remember my brother on his wedding day, he would like look around people and then he would turn and go like he was just trying to tighten his face and do a little knot. So I'm assuming he looks at me and says, is this your brother?

May God bless you. And just took off. They were like, this man's on something. I don't know what, what this is. And also, if you go weep somewhere, that takes a little bit. I don't know how long it takes you to weep.

A couple minutes. I don't know. I don't know how long, you know, he goes and weeps. He then it says he washes his face and he comes back. He looked different. You don't weep and just bounce back from that.

So when he walked back, they were like, something's going on here. I'm sure when he took off, they thought, oh, this is the time they jump out and get us. You know, he confirmed that he was here and now we're trapped. He comes back. He's wept and cleaned his face. So then verse 31, then he washed his face and came out and controlling himself.

He said, serve the food. They served him by himself and them by themselves and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves because the Egyptians could not eat with the Hebrews. But that is an abomination to the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth. And the men looked at one another in amazement. Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table.

And Benjamin's portion was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and were married with him. That means they got tipsy. All right. Picture this for a second. The Egyptians know that Joseph is Hebrew.

So they're not going to eat with him. He eats by himself. So the Egyptians eat by themselves. Joseph eats by himself at multiple tables at this place. This is apparently pretty extravagant set up. And all of his brothers get to eat by themselves and they sit in birth order.

And Joseph has all this food brought out. First of all, these men are starving. They came to the place where they thought, if we don't go, everyone dies. So is it okay if we risk Benjamin because he's going to die here or there? Like, can we go? Everybody's going to die if we don't.

So they go. They're starving. All this food is brought out because Egypt is doing well because God ordained that it would be through Joseph and the planning that was going into this. And then, this is my favorite part, he piles up food for all of them that they're amazed. And he gives Benjamin five times as much. Which, if you've ever eaten and you're thinking, like, I think your piece of chicken is bigger than my piece of chicken.

Like, KFC did it to you on purpose. Like, you know, you open yours up and you're like, all right, I'll eat this. And then you see somebody else, they ordered the same thing. But it's like, no, that chicken was healthier. It worked out. I don't know why they gave me the sad chicken.

I think we accidentally got our boxes swapped. Like, you ever had that? Five times as much. It'd be like, if you sat down, I don't know what they had, like Egyptian chicken. And so, like, this guy's got a chicken leg. And then they just keep piling stuff.

Like, you got a piece of cake, they give him a cake. They give you a drumstick, they give him a whole chicken. Five times as much. So they're piling this up and they're like, did they think we sat in reverse order? Obviously, I look older than him, right? Like, Ruben's on the other end going, why are they, what is happening here?

And you know, they probably look at him like, everybody's got to just eat what they were given and be respectful. But I wonder if they were like, Benjamin, can I have some of that? And Benjamin was like, I don't want to be rude. I think I'm going to have to eat this whole cake. You know, I haven't eaten in like a year. I think I'm going to have to just eat this whole chicken.

I don't want to offend anybody. I hate to end up in prison. All right, so they do that. Chapter 44. Then he commanded the steward of his house, fill the men's sacks with food as much as they can carry.

Put each man's money in the mouth of his sack and put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest with his money for the grain. And he did as Joseph told him. As soon as the morning was light, the men were sent away with their donkeys. They had gone only a short distance from the city. Now, Joseph said to his servant, up, follow after the men. When you overtake them, say to them, why have you repaid evil for good?

Is it not from this that my Lord drinks and by this that he practices divination? You have done evil in doing this. So he gave him his cup that they're going to accuse. They're going to say he practices divination with. Now, we don't know if that was just the accusation, if it was made to seem even more powerful, if he actually did practice divination, he lived in Egypt and had taken on some Egyptian practices. You're not supposed to practice divination.

But we don't know. But that's part of the story. So it's a way to kind of fortune tell or whatever. When he overtook them, he spoke to them these words. And they said to him, why does my Lord speak such words as these? Far be it from your servants to do such a thing.

Behold, the money that we found in the mouths of our sacks, we brought back to you from the land of Canaan. And how then could we steal silver or gold from your Lord's house? Whichever of your servants is found with it shall die. And we also will be my Lord's servants. And he said, let it be as you say, who is he who is found with it shall be my servant and the rest of you shall be innocent. So he goes.

And can you imagine the integrity they have that they just say, no, no, no, no. We didn't take anything. And if you find it, kill that one and we'll all be slaves. They just were like, we didn't do this. And he says, fine, but we'll, we'll be a little more fair about it. We'll just make him a slave, whoever it's found with.

Then each man quickly, this is verse 11, 44, 11. Then each man quickly lowered his sack to the ground and each man opened his sack and he searched beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest. And the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. Then they tore their clothes and every man loaded his donkey and they returned to the city. They didn't just say, well, Benjamin, sorry, buddy. They all said, oh no, it can't be Benjamin.

They tear their clothes and they just get back on their donkeys and they all go back. When Judah and his brothers came to Joseph's house, he was still there. They fell before him to the ground and Joseph said to them, what deed is this that you have done? Do you not know that a man like me can indeed practice divination? And Judah, and this was all through a translator. So he would have said really aggressive things.

They looked at him and they looked at the translator and the translator would say it. And then he would look at him and aggressively say things again. They would look at the translator like that and then say, oh, that sounded worse than the first one. And so they would listen to it. Practice divination. Verse 16.

And Judah said, what shall we say to my Lord? What shall we speak or how can we clear ourselves? God has found out the guilt of your servants. Behold, we are my Lord's servants, both we and he also in whose hand the cup has been found. But he said, far be it from me that I should do so.

That's Joseph responding. Only the man in whose cup and whose hand the cup was found shall be my servant. But as for you, go up in peace to your father. Do you see what's happened? Joseph. Took the same 10 brothers.

Put him in a situation where they can sell Benjamin into slavery and walk away. They can get rid of Benjamin. He can be a slave in Egypt and they can walk away. So Joseph just says, no, he'll stay and be a slave. Y'all are free to go. Then Judah went up to him and said, oh, my Lord, please let your servant speak a word in my Lord's ears and let not your anger burn against your servant.

For you are like Pharaoh himself. My Lord asked his servant saying, have you a father or a brother? And we said to my Lord, we have a father, an old man and a young brother, the child of his old age. His brother is dead and he alone is left of his mother's children and his father loves him. Then you said to your servants, bring him down to me that I may set my eyes on him.

And we said to my Lord, the boy cannot leave his father. For if he should leave his father, his father would die. Then you said to your servants, unless your youngest brother comes down with you, you shall not see my face again. When we went back to your servant, my father, we told him the words of the Lord. And when our father said, go again and buy us a little food, we said we can't go down unless our youngest brother goes with us. And then we will go down for we cannot see the man's face unless our younger brother is with us.

Then your servant, my father said to us, you know that my wife bore me two sons, one left me. And I said, surely he's been torn to pieces and I have never seen him since. If you take this one also from me and harm happens to him, you will bring down my gray hairs in evil to shield. He says, now, therefore, as soon as I came to your servant, my father and the boy is not with me. As soon as I come to your servant, my father, the boy is not with me. Then as his life is bound up in the boy's life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die.

And your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant, our father, with sorrow to shield. For your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, if I do not bring him back to you, then I shall bear the blame before my father all my life. Now, therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my Lord and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the evil that would find my father. Joseph tees it up for the older brothers to be able to walk away and leave Benjamin there to have him be a slave in Egypt.

And Judah comes and says, I can't, I can't go back. I can't go back without Benjamin. I'll take his place. I'll be a slave in Egypt. Benjamin's got to go home. I'll be a slave in Egypt.

Benjamin's got to go home. I'll take his place. I've already made a pledge. I'm not doing it. I'm not going back. I'm not going back again and telling my father that his son is dead.

I've seen that once. I don't want to see it again. I'm not doing it. Chapter 45. Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him.

And he cried, make everyone go out from me. So he yelled this in Egyptian. His brothers don't understand. He just yells, get out of here. And all the Egyptians leave. So no one stayed with him.

And when Joseph made himself known to his brothers and he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed at his presence. Judah says what he should have said so many years ago. He swaps places with Benjamin.

Judah fights for Benjamin's life. He fights for what is right. He does what he should have done. He's the one earlier who was saying we're guilty. And they all agreed. And then Judah, all the brothers walked back broken hearted.

And Judah just says, you can't. We can't lose Benjamin. And when he says it, Joseph just can't control it. And so he yells, get out of here. Everybody runs out but the Hebrews and the Hebrews are looking at him. And then in Hebrew, he says, I am Joseph.

And they didn't know what to do. He starts weeping. And he says, is my dad alive? They didn't answer. They just stare at him. So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please.

And they came near. And he said, I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here. For God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years. And there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here but God. And he has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Go, hurry up and go up to my father and say to him, thus says your son Joseph. God has made me Lord of all Egypt. Come down to me.

Do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me. You and your children and your children's children and your flocks and your herds and all that you have. There I will provide for you. And there are yet five years of famine to come. So that you and your household and all that you have do not come to poverty.

He said, now your eyes see and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You speak in Hebrew. That is my mouth that speaks to you. Hurry up and bring my father down here. Verse 34. Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept.

And Benjamin wept upon his neck and he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After this his brothers talked with him. He has them in the palm of his hand to do them harm. And he just wants to hug them and welcome them and draw them near and care for them and provide for them. And he says, I'm your brother who you sold into slavery. And we would want to.

You would want to think that what would follow that sentence is I'm the one you sold into slavery. And now you'll pay. I'm the one that was in the pit and I've waited for this moment my entire life. But he says, I'm the one who you sold into slavery. Do not be distressed. God has worked in this to bring about provision for you.

You didn't send me. God sent me. And there's hope for you because of it. Now, what happens is they go get his father. His father comes back. They weep.

They hug. He settles them in the land of Goshen. He cares for them. His father actually gets to meet Pharaoh. They bless them. They put him in a nice land but not where the Egyptians are.

And then all of Egypt becomes extremely wealthy because they're the only people that have food for the next five years. And the nation of Israel is cared for, protected, and lives in Goshen. God even tells Jacob, don't be afraid. Go down there. I'm at work in this. Now, when we read stories in the Bible, so often we want to see what are we supposed to learn from them?

How are we supposed to act? What did they do wrong that we shouldn't do? What did they do right that we should do? We want to read this story and you could say, when you have the opportunity for revenge, don't take it. When you have the opportunity for revenge, don't. We could put you in the place of Joseph and we could talk through that.

But the problem is with this story is that we're not Joseph. We're his brothers. And Jesus is Joseph. We're the ones who did not want a king, did not want someone we had to bow down to, who actively opposed him. Jesus comes and proclaims a kingdom and humanity rises up against him to destroy him, to cast him out, to kill him. And then he rises, not from a prison, but from a tomb, not to an earthly palace, but to an eternal throne.

And one day everyone will stand before him and have that moment where he says what Peter said about Jesus in Acts chapter 2, which is, Jesus whom you crucified, God has made him both Lord and Christ. Everybody will have someday when they stand before Jesus and see the king who has absolute power over everything. And we'll be like the brothers that our hearts fail us because we know our sin and we know what we've done. But Jesus is better than Joseph. He says the same thing. Wasn't just your sin that sent me here.

It was the father who sent me here so that he might make provision for you. Wasn't just your sin that sent me here, but I came here to pay for sin so that you might have life, that you might have forgiveness, that you might have freedom, that that's the hope found in Jesus. That he is the one who dies, that he might welcome and love his brothers, that he wants to wrap his arms around us, welcome us. That when he looks at his brothers and they're standing back from him and he says, come near to me. It's me. It's me.

He weeps and he hugs them. And that's what Jesus does for us. That Jesus wants you to know your sin. He wants you to see it. He wants you to feel it. He wants you to know your guilt.

But not for condemnation. Not so that you might feel terrible. Not so that you might be crushed by it. But so that you might be free from it. Matt's going to come back up here. As we close out our time, I want you to see this.

He wants you to see your sin. Not for vindictiveness. This is one of the things that people go with the Bible, you know, it just says, it comes out and just says I'm a terrible person. It's like, yes. Yes, it does. It cosigns that you're terrible.

But for your redemption not to crush you. So that you might see it and then it might not weigh on you. That your guilt might not find you out. That he wants you to see your sin and he wants you to turn from it. Just like Judah and them. They changed how they were.

They wanted to turn from this. They knew that they had been guilty and they weren't going to repeat it. He wants you to turn from it and he wants you to come to him so that he can forgive you. So that you can find grace. And reconciliation. That he can welcome you.

Do you know that that's Jesus' response? That he can't control himself. But he overwhelmingly wants to wrap us up. Have us close. Draw us near. Forgive us.

Reconcile us. And he says the same thing. God sent me before you to prepare a place. He sent me before you for provision. Not for harm. For good.

Not for destruction. I'm the one whom you destroyed. But not so that you might be crushed by. But so that you might be saved. That's Jesus. And that's our hope.

That's the only hope we have. That we might see our sin. That we might repent of our sin. And that we might in Jesus find the one who paid for our sin. And who welcomes us back. And prepares a place for us.

That we might have life. And protection. And provision. The goal in this story is not just to be like Joseph. But to be the brothers.

Others who don't deserve anything but condemnation. And who receive everything because of the grace of someone else. Because someone else was willing to suffer. And someone else was willing to carry the penalty on themselves. That Joseph with joy can look at his brothers and say, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. God did this.

God put me in the pit. God sent me to prison. God elevated me out of slavery and out of prison to here. So that he might bless you. And that Jesus looks at us and says the same thing. So many of us think that we come to Jesus.

And he's like, Alright. Alright. It's about time you saw how terrible you are. Now go sit in the corner and think about it. And if you keep it together, then maybe. We feel like maybe he saves me.

But I'm kind of in the back of the group. And I'm not really as welcome as the other ones. Or maybe he saves me. But he's still holding this sin against me. Or maybe he would save me. Or he did save me.

But I've continued to sin. I've continued to be broken. And so now he's going to take it back. And that's not what he does. He says, No, I went to the cross for you. God sent me there that you might be welcomed.

And you might be loved. And you might be grabbed. And hugged. And wept over. And cared for. If you have never placed your faith in Jesus.

I want you to see your sin. And know how terrible it is. I want you to feel the guilt of it. But I want you to turn from it. And take it to Jesus. Who forgives the worst of sinners.

And brings hope in the darkest of places. And joyously welcomes those who've harmed him. In a moment, we are going to take communion together as a church family. Which is where we celebrate and remember that Jesus' body was broken for us. And that his blood was shed for us. And we take bread.

And we're going to dip it in juice. To remind ourselves of his body and his blood. And to remember what Jesus has done. And that we need the gospel. And that our hope is in him. And when you do that today, I want you to remember that, yes, our sin sent him to the cross.

But God sent him to the cross. So that we might be provided for. And that is his provision. His body and his blood shed for you. That you could be welcomed. That our hope is in him.

And our life is in him. If you are not a believer, we would encourage you to place your faith in Jesus. And then take communion. And if you are not a believer. And have not placed your faith in Jesus. We would ask you to not take communion.

Because that is something for believers. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your grace. That you save sinners. And that our hope is in you. The one who suffered and died in our place.

That we might be welcomed when we don't deserve it. And that you go to great lengths to orchestrate. Us seeing our sin. And being able to repent. And being able to be welcomed. And that you have prepared a place for us.

That you have gone ahead of us to bring about life. And may we place our faith in you. And find our hope in you. As you redeem and you reconcile broken situations. We love you and we praise you in Jesus name. Amen.

Temptation, Suffering, and the Greater Will of God

Temptation, Suffering, and the Greater Will of God

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. Y'all, that was some worship. That was good. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in Genesis 39 today.

We are in the Joseph narrative. We're in the back stretch, the home stretch of Genesis. And we are following the story of Joseph. We're going to be on page 19 in our Blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. We want you to have a Bible that you can read at home, but it will be on page 19.

All right, so we've been in Joseph for the past couple of weeks. We started off the Joseph story, and we're introduced to Joseph. He's one of the 12 sons of Jacob. Joseph, he was the favorite. He was loved by his father so much so that he gets this technicolor, this rainbow coat that probably would have looked really tacky to us, but back in the ancient Near East, probably would have killed it. He gets this coat, kind of shows that he is the favorite, and then God starts giving him dreams.

And these dreams are prophetic, and he's explaining them to his brothers and his dad that these dreams are one day they're all going to bow down to him. And that doesn't go well for him. His brothers get jealous. They beat him up, throw him in a pit, plan to kill him, but his brother Judah steps in and says, no, let's sell him into slavery. We can make some money off this. So Joseph went away, and while he was away last week, we walked through Genesis 38, which is the story of Judah, that God, out of all the brothers, chooses the most broken one, the most messed up one, to bring about his line.

That's ultimately what we see, is that Jesus comes through the line of Judah, and now we're back to Joseph. And we're following Joseph down to rock bottom. His story builds you up, or breaks you down to build you up later. It's a classic rags to riches story. One of the earliest ones I remember, as far as rags to riches stories goes, was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I remember in middle school being assigned to read it, and I was like, man, that book is that thick.

So I did what every other kid did back in middle school. I went to Books A Million, and I got the Cliff Notes. And I read the Cliff Notes. And y'all, the Cliff Notes is a good story. Like, it's a really good story. It only needs to be that long.

But it's like a classic rags to riches. Pip is this little orphan, and he gets some good luck. He gets a benefactor. He rises through the ranks of English society. And he lives happily ever after. He gets the girl of his dreams.

We love stories like that. If you were like me, and you didn't like to read stories like that, but you'd like to watch all of the movie. I got to watch all of The Pursuit of Happiness. And that's another classic rags to riches story. It's a true story. Will Smith, he plays this guy that in the 80s lost everything.

Him and his son had to live homeless on the street as he was doing an internship at a brokerage. And it's like 90 minutes of Will Smith getting his teeth kicked in. And five minutes of he made it. Yay. And it just kind of breaks you down and builds you up. Joseph is a little bit better.

We get some more chapters with some more length of how he's going to rise. But today we're going to follow him to rock bottom. So we're in Genesis 39. And in this story today specifically, we're going to see that he undergoes sexual temptation. And I want to spend some time in this today because we're in an overly sexualized culture. And the Bible has some stuff to say about it.

So we're going to spend some time in that. When we take a step back from it, we're going to see that all the suffering, all the trials that Joseph is undergoing is part of a bigger plan that is in play. So let me pray. And then we will jump into the text. God, thank you so much that you've given us your word, that we get to open it every Sunday. Be exposed to the gospel.

Be exposed to you. God, I pray that you would speak to us in this story. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

Verse 1. Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. So let me pause for a moment. I want to point out something the text clearly highlights. Joseph is about to, he's in suffering, he's about to suffer.

He is in a whole bunch of mess, and it makes it clear the Lord is with him. The Lord does not abandon his people, no matter the situation. So whatever mess that you may be in life, God is with us, for those of us who have trusted in Christ. He is with Joseph. Verse 3. It picks up.

His master saw that the Lord was with him, and the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him. And he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From the time that he had made him overseer in his house over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in house and field. So he left all he had in Joseph's charge, and because of him, he had no concern about anything but the food that he ate.

All right, so Potiphar is the one that purchases him ultimately. Potiphar is an officer of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is the king. He's the ruler of Egypt. And he's not just an officer. He's a captain of the guard.

So he is a high-ranking official in the Egyptian government. So we're already starting to see here that God has a plan for Joseph. He doesn't get sold to just anyone. He gets sold to this high-ranking official. And he starts to make Potiphar rich. And Potiphar realizes this.

He's like, your God is making us successful. And every bit of success that Joseph had rolls over into Potiphar. Potiphar becomes so successful that he hands over the keys to his business empire to Joseph. So that the only thing he has to worry about is his next meal. And y'all, that is crazy successful. Because you asked me, hey, man, how are things going?

How's real estate? How's the church? And I said, man, deals are going well. These sermons preach themselves. Let me tell you what I'm concerned about. Breakfast.

Duck donuts in the morning. Cafe strudel for brunch. I don't know. Like, real Mexico for lunch. I mean, Libby's. I mean, dinner.

I got options for days. And I don't really, I mean, if I start rolling into that, you'd be like, okay, this is weird. You must have some success. The only thing that you worry about is your next meal. And that's Potiphar. He is growing successful.

He's handed it all over to Joseph. Everything is going well until it's not. Verse 6. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, lie with me. But he refused and said to his master's wife, behold, because of me, my master has no concern about anything in the house.

And he has put everything he has in my charge. He is not greater in the house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her to lie beside her or to be with her. So Joseph, Joseph is starting to make lemonade out of this situation.

Things are starting to go well. And then his handsome form catches the eye of Potiphar's wife. And it's about to get messy. There's a couple layers to how messy the situation is. The first deals with sexual temptation. Potiphar's wife repeatedly solicits herself, repeatedly offers herself.

It is direct at the start. She says, lie with me. And we get messages like that all the time in our culture, that sexual temptation can be direct. That it shows up on the internet. You are only a click away from being solicited into sexual immorality, into a whole world of broken sinfulness and sexual temptation that leads to sexual sin. We're a click away.

And with smartphones, there are apps for days. There are like 8 billion dating apps that are designed to invite you into this casual hookup culture where sex has been so detached from the way that God created it that it was deeply spiritual, meant for a husband and a wife, for the procreation of children, for the enjoyment of one another and intimacy. It's been so detached from that that there's all kinds of tech companies that are trying to profit off of it. I mean, Facebook. Facebook used to be like, oh man, look at his family. Look at that guy I went to high school with.

What a beautiful family. Look at his kids. Man, it's great. So like old flings soliciting you, like sending messages in your inbox, porn bots reaching out to you. There's no safe space anywhere on the internet. And it's gotten so casual that it's not uncommon to hear stories, even in office environments where someone is just asking, soliciting themselves for casual sex.

It is direct. We see it all over our culture. Over and over again, we see direct messages. And when it's not direct, it's subtle. It's subtle temptation. That's what Joseph also got.

It says, and she spoke to Joseph day after day and he would not listen to her. To lie beside her or to be with her. So she makes the appeal, lie with me. And then she says, no, just lie beside me. Just come join the bed. Lie beside me.

It's subtle. It lures you in. It's just coffee. It's just lunch. It's just text messaging. It's just messaging back and forth.

Lie beside me. We will justify ourselves that it's just coffee, that it's just a drink, that it's just a meal. It's just messages. Yeah, there's some sexual jokes that got thrown in. It's not that big of a deal. It lures you in like a frog on a slow boil.

The old wives tale, for those of you that like cooking frogs, was that if you want to cook a frog, you don't just throw it in boiling water. That you put it in a normal pot of water and you slowly turn up the heat. And it won't do that. The frog will just stay in and it slowly turns up the heat until finally it doesn't realize that it's been boiled. And that is us. As coffee rolls over into someone's place, as lunch turns into more intimate meetings, as messages turn more intimate, it lures you in slowly.

Slowly, until you have slowly boiled over from sexual temptation into sexual sin. The reality is that no one is immune to it in this culture. It is all over the place. That's why we need to take the Proverbs seriously. The Proverbs has a lot to say on this. There's one passage I love in 721-22 that says, Whether direct or subtle, sexual temptation lures us into impurity, into sexual immorality, into adultery.

And what that can ultimately do is for those of us who say we love Jesus, it lures you down a road that you may never return from. And if you reject Jesus all together on that road, that ultimately leads you to death in hell. Like an ox to the slaughter. That is what Joseph was facing day in, day out. But that's not the only layer that makes this messy.

You see, the second layer that makes this worse is that Joseph is a slave. There is an imbalance. There is a power imbalance here. She is a free woman and she's not just any free woman. She's the free woman wife of a powerful official. And Joseph doesn't have certain rights.

This is so picturesque of what we discovered a couple of years ago that was at the heart of the Me Too movement. That a couple of years ago, our nation's eyes were open to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories that came out that showed the brokenness of this world and how it has been for thousands of years. That there are those in power and authority who objectify, who harass, who assault. And some of you have seen this and some of you have been through this. And I am sorry. I'm sorry that we live in a broken world where this is the reality.

I'm sorry for some of you that we're not able to escape this. But we're stuck in this. Let me say very clearly. God is judge. And that one day Jesus will sit on the throne. And every single wrong will be answered for.

You can take that to the bank. The Bible gives us the picture that Jesus is a judge who will judge all of these wrongs. But the Bible also gives us people that we can empathize with. Joseph being one of them. Joseph knows what it's like every day to go to work thinking, I'd just like to do my job and being harassed over and over and over again. Wondering if you say the wrong thing, what is that going to do to your standing?

Wondering who you can talk to. Wondering if anyone is going to believe you. Feeling powerless. Let me also say clearly, if that is you, if you are currently in that situation, we want you to come and talk to us as pastors. Because you do not need to be in that. We want to be able to help you out of that situation.

This is the situation of many. This is the situation of Joseph. So how does he respond to the sexual temptation? How does he respond to this abuse of power? He responds by declaring truth. He has three points of truth.

He says that this would be an abuse of trust with Potiphar. He says he has put everything in my charge. He's like, I'm not going to abuse the trust that I have. He's given me everything. I'm not going there. Then he says, you are his wife.

He makes the point, this would be an offense against Potiphar. I'm not going to sin against him. And then he makes a third point. He says, how am I going to sin against God? He says, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? He ultimately sees what is true about the Bible, that all sins ultimately and primarily are a sin against God, and he's not going to do it.

He responds with truth. He speaks truth into the situation. And I want to expand this category for us. I actually want to take a moment to step away from the story and as a pastor talk to you guys because every season I see different people in our church that are wrestling with this, that are fighting sexual temptation. So I want to expand Joseph's categories that he gives of truth, and I want to give five ways that we can battle sexual temptation, that it might not roll over into sexual sin.

And the first one being, cultivate a deep love for Jesus. Cultivate a deep love for Jesus. If we are so in love with God, if we are worshiping Him, if we are delighting in Him and enjoying Him, if we are doing that well, seeking Him in worship, in word, in prayer, if we're doing that, when sexual temptation comes, we'll see it for what it is, that it's gross, that it leads to death, that it does not satisfy. That's why we say over and over again in our church that we believe that Jesus is better than everything else is because we want to believe that, even in the midst of temptation, that we might see that He is better.

That is your primary way. If you're enjoying God, you can absolutely take sexual temptation and push it to the side. But there are going to be seasons where we are not doing that well. Let me give you a second way to fight this. The second way is to memorize and quote Scripture. Memorize and quote Scripture.

Psalm 119.11 says, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. That's the hope, that we might know God's word, that we might hide it deeply in our hearts, that we might be able to use it to combat sexual sin in all temptation. That's what Jesus does when He's being tempted in the wilderness by Satan. He quotes the Old Testament, fires back, uses the Bible as a weapon. That's what Paul is getting at in Ephesians 6 when he says, put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. He gets to the sword of the Spirit, which is imagery for God's word.

That you might use it as a weapon, that you might use it as a weapon to defend yourself against evil. Store up the word in your heart. Have some fighter verses memorized that you might be able to repeat them in a moment's notice. Third, pray for an escape. Pray for an escape. 1 Corinthians 10.13 says, No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. That's been taken out of context. And people will say, God doesn't give you any more than you can handle. Sometimes He does. So that's not what the passage is getting at.

What He's saying is, is that when you are being tempted, if you pray, God will give an escape. That needs to be our heart. That we would pray, as Jesus prays, lead me not into temptation. That we might not engage in sin. That we might find an escape. 4.

Invite church family in. Invite church family in. We are not meant to walk in this alone. The reality is, is in an over-sexualized culture, where all of us have faced this, and all of us have fallen in some form or fashion. You are not alone. If you have stuff hidden, the Bible calls you to bring it to the light.

As 1 John 1, 5-10 teaches, that we might walk in the light together. That brings true fellowship with the body, and also helps expose light to darkness. There are times, there are seasons in my life, where I'm asking the people in my life, whether it's Chet in the office, or the guys in my group, hey, this is what's going on. Can you pray about this? Can you also ask me about this in three weeks? We are not meant to walk in this alone.

Invite church family in. Fifth, fear God. Fear of God is important in battling sexual temptation. Now that is not popular in our culture. It is not popular to uphold the fear of God, to uphold the wrath of God, but it is vital in your fight against sexual temptation. That's what Joseph ultimately does.

He says, I'm not going to sin against God. That's what Jesus teaches in Matthew 5, when he's teaching specifically on this. He says, If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, throw it away from you, for it's better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, then your whole body be thrown into hell. And the reason why that's important is because in seasons where you're not cultivating a deep love for Jesus, when you're not remembering his word to use it, when you're not praying well, when you're not inviting people in, you know what will help? Fear of God. Because flames are hot.

It is deeply helpful for me in those seasons to remember that eternal flames are hot, and I don't want any part of that. I want Jesus. So we are called to use fear of God as a means to battle this. And then Joseph gives us a bonus one in how he responds. Verse 11. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment saying, Lie with me.

But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. So Joseph's working, gets in a situation where he is alone. It says she caught him by his garment. That isn't just, oh, she grabbed his garment. The idea in the Hebrew is that she grabbed and seized his garment, and she pulled him in and said, Lie with me. Now there's no amount of declaring truth in this moment.

It's going to help. She's got him by his outer garments. They would have had outer robes with a sash, and then there have been inner garments that have been more like long underwear, like a long gown. She has his outer garments in hand. And he does one of the more biblical responses to sexual temptation. He books it.

He flees. He runs from the situation, so much so that she's got his garment. He like wiggles his way out, just has the inner garment on, and books it, and leaves with his garment left in her hand. That's what Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians 6, 18, when he says, Flee sexual immorality. When everything else fails, when all defenses have been exhausted, run. That's the biblical picture.

Run. If you are single, if you are not in a covenant marriage, and you are dating someone, and you put yourself in a compromising situation, run. If you're on the couch, if you're in the car, get out. Flee. That's the command. Run from sexual temptation.

When the culture is wooing you, and saying, Explore your sexuality. Explore sexual freedom. I want to plead with you. There are millions of people who have gone down that road, and have never come back. Run. Flee.

When your phone is tempting, and you are scrolling, drop it. Run. Flee. Whatever situation you are in, or you are feeling this, the last line of defense is to run. Get out. Flee.

We have got to start taking sexual temptation, and sexual sin seriously, because it will kill us. I have a son who's two. We do fires in the backyard. We have this fire pit, and my daughter, she knows when the fire is going, and she's kind of a timid person in general. She stays far enough back, but my son is like a bug, led to a bug zapper. I mean, he just, he sees the flames, and it's not like he just runs into it.

He just slowly, you know, gets closer and closer, and I've got to pull him out. I've got to yell at him, because he doesn't realize, that if he gets close enough, it will mar him. It will kill him. And that is the same with us. If we are not careful, we will get lured in, and we will not survive. And we need to treat it with the seriousness that the Bible treats it, and respond like Joseph.

Joseph responds righteously, but as we're going to see next, his righteous response leads to more suffering. Verse 13. And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and had fled out of the house, she called to the men of her household, and said, see, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice, and as soon as he heard that, I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me, and fled, and got out of the house. Now she has made up a rape allegation.

And what's worse is, is she's got evidence. This false allegation, she's got his garment. And this is a big deal. It's a big deal, period. It's a big deal for him, because Joseph is a slave. He does not have certain rights.

She is a free woman, and she's accusing him. And in his culture, he can be put to death for this. And she adds to it. It wasn't just the attempted rape. It was, he's making a mockery of our family, and a shame on our culture. That's a big deal.

And there's a little bit of a racist tinge there. This Hebrew, who is going to make a mockery of us. All of the goodwill that Joseph has stored up is about to be exhausted as soon as Potiphar gets home. Verse 16. Then she laid up his garment by her until his master came home.

And she told him the same story, saying, The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to laugh at me. But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house. As soon as his master heard the words that his wife spoke to him, This is the way your servant treated me. His anger was kindled. And Joseph's master took him and put him into prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in prison.

So Potiphar hears this, and justifiably, he gets angry. But he doesn't kill him. He throws him into the king's prison. And I want us to imagine how Joseph would have felt. I mean, he was sold into slavery by his brothers. He worked his tail off for years to work his way up in this household, only to do the right thing and end up suffering regardless.

Sometimes suffering is so unfair. Sometimes you do the right thing and you still suffer. Sometimes we suffer because of our own mistakes. But there are situations when you respond the way you're supposed to and you still suffer the consequences. I love movies that do this. I love stories that bring out this feeling because there's a feeling in all of us when we see unjust suffering that just makes us mad, that makes us upset.

I love stories that do this. There are two movies that we watched all the time growing up, my stepdad and I. We watched them when they come on TNT. My mom would literally get out of the chair and leave because we watched them so many times she was tired of seeing them. We watched Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Two Stephen King novels made into awesome powerhouse movies.

Both capture the same thing. The Green Mile is about a man that, it's about prison guards that are on death row. They're supervising death row. There's a new prisoner that comes in. He's accused of killing two little girls in a pretty horrific manner. And he's big and he's scary at first, but the more they get to know him, they see that he's softer.

And then they start to see there's actually something miraculous about him, something angelic almost. He starts performing these miracles and they slowly begin to realize there's no way he committed these murders. And towards the end of the movie, you realize there's somebody else on death row that's actually guilty who did commit the murders. But there's no way to prove it and he still goes to the electric chair. And there's this scene when all the prison guards are in tears and they're angry and they're upset that he is going to be put to death. And what's great about stories like that is they bring you in to the same feeling that you're upset, that you are mad, that it's not right that he would suffer for something he did not do.

I love that because it brings out what's written into us as being made in the image of God. There's a part of us that hates to see unjust suffering. But God operates within that fallen story and he uses suffering for greater purposes, which is what is ultimately going to happen here with Joseph. Verse 21, But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge all of the prisoners who were in prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.

The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. So the chapter ends with a foretaste of where this story is going. But for now, we're at rock bottom in the prison. He is suffering. And as Americans, this is difficult for us.

We don't have a really strong theology of suffering. We don't grasp why God would use situations like this. But God makes it clear he is with him. This is not purpose. He is behind him. He shows him steadfast love.

But he does the same thing he did with Potiphar. God is with him. He blesses his work. He actually basically becomes a little bit of the sub kind of warden of the prison. That God is with him. He's not going to abandon him.

His suffering is aimed at a bigger purpose in this story. And we're going to walk through that in the coming weeks. But this is how our God works. God works within the broken story to bring about suffering for greater purposes. And suffering often is the way that God accomplishes his greater purposes. And God knows that that's not fair.

That is why he came. That is why Jesus came. That is why God took on flesh and entered the story himself. And when he took on flesh and he entered into our story he took on human suffering. He experienced suffering. He experienced temptation.

That's what Hebrews 4 is getting at when it says for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. We have a God who can sympathize. Who knows what Joseph went through. Who knows what we went through. Who subjected himself to temptation in the wilderness from the devil himself. This is what C.S.

Lewis has to say about this. He says we never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it. And Christ because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means. The only complete realist. You have moments in your walk where you are so tired of fighting sin and you are so weary. Jesus gets it.

He's the only complete realist and what he is getting at what C.S. Lewis is picturing for us is that he's the only one. All of us have fallen in temptation at some point. Jesus is the only one who's gone through the full extent of temptation and did not sin. He is the only complete realist. He knows what it's like to be Joseph day in, day out being tempted and he also knows what it's like to respond like Joseph to persevere in righteousness only to suffer in the end.

The greater purpose of Joseph leads to the greater purpose of Jesus and that was Christ going to the cross to suffer for all of us that have fallen. For all of us that did not respond like Joseph that have fallen to temptation. So that by faith in believing in his death and resurrection we might actually experience what it looks like to have the God the universe in us inside us the Holy Spirit helping us fight that we might not fall to temptation anymore. All of Joseph's story eventually leads to Christ on the cross for us. And that is good news for everyone in this room that did not run like Joseph.

For all of us that gave in to temptation for all of us that were swept up by lust. For all of us that have fallen and sometimes over and over and over again. For everyone in this room who has felt the crushing weight of shame and guilt the hope is that Jesus came that he might die for us that we might get his perfect standing and he might take our shame and our guilt that he might cover us those that have fallen. That is the hope of the gospel and the response for us is to run to Jesus to repent and run from sin and be made new. And we're going to celebrate as the band comes up.

Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat

Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat

Chet Phillips

Transcript

It's good to see you all this morning. My name is Chet. I am one of the pastors of Mill City Church. If this is your first time with us, we're glad you're here. We gather together on Sundays. We have groups that meet throughout the week.

We gather on Sundays. We sing to Jesus and about Jesus. And then we open the Bible and we read it and study it together. If you'll grab a Bible and go to Genesis chapter 37. We've been walking through the book of Genesis. If you have one of these blue Bibles, it'll be on page 18.

If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you when you leave. That's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible. We've been walking through this story. We've been following this family. And we are now going to begin looking at the life of Joseph.

We're going to be following his story for the next little while as Genesis kind of rounds its way out. So we are in the home stretch. We have turned. We've touched third base and we are headed home. We're going to be able to finish this book up within the next year or two. And the next several weeks we'll be finishing up and studying through Joseph.

I, when I was in 10th grade. Oh, sorry. First of all, let me say I'm glad. But I'm always excited when the elementary students are in here. It's good to see you all this morning. I love having the elementary students in here.

I learn things. Like today, I learned that your soul is located right here. Which makes so much sense as to how I feel after I've eaten. Like I've just fed my soul. And so it's good to see you all this morning. When I was in 10th grade, I was playing quarterback for our JV football team.

And I was not a very good quarterback because I was what my driver's ed instructor called impetuous. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that word, it means when you need to make a decision quickly, you just go for it, which is a problem when you're at yellow lights or when you're throwing a pass into double coverage. So I threw a lot of interceptions. And we were only a few games in. I went to, I faked a handoff. I was rolling out this way.

Somebody grabbed my right shoulder. My left foot got out in front of me and buckled like that. Oh, I actually just did there because it's got problems. And my kneecap shot out of place, which it does. Well, it started around then. And I would have one knee injury every football season for the next six years.

And I learned a lot of things. I was introduced to LCLs and PCLs and ACLs and meniscus and sublexed patellas. I dislocated my kneecap a lot. And if you've never done that, if you've never dislocated like your left kneecap, just imagine what it would feel like to dislocate your right kneecap and then pretend it was over here and you'll have a good idea of what that feels like. And so I did that a lot. And what I was really introduced to was having plans for the way things were going to work out and then having that just knocked out from under you.

That ended my quarterbacking career. I didn't go pro. You know, I just never, it just knocked it out. And I did this every football season. I would get injured again. And so the progress I had made and the way things were working would just get reset.

And I would just have my plans, my future just wiped out from under me. And that was kind of how it began. And this happens in life consistently and on a much greater scale. That we will have plans for our future and just have them snatched away. We'll have plans for our future and how things are going to look and just have our legs knocked out from under us. We'll lose a job.

Somebody will have been drinking and will drive left of center. We will have a parent leave or a spouse leave. We will have plans. We'll have a vision for what future is going to look like and just have it derailed. And that's what happens in this story. That's what happens in the life of Joseph.

And so we're going to ask that question today is what do we do in those times when we just get kind of stuck where we had a plan, we had a future, we had an idea of what things were going to look like and that just gets taken away from us and now we're just kind of stuck in a holding pattern. And so that's what we're going to be looking at this morning. So I'm going to pray and then we'll start reading this text together. God, we come here today from all different places. There are some people who have had a joyous, life-giving week. And there are some people who have had the life beat out of them this week.

There are some who feel much the way Joseph is going to feel like the future was snatched away, like they're stuck in kind of a holding pattern. And we just ask for your help as we study this and we ask for your Holy Spirit to minister to us, to comfort us, to teach us that we might grow to look more like you and that we might grow in our love for Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen. Chapter 37, verse 1. Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings in the land of Canaan.

These are the generations of Jacob. Now whenever it says that, it means we're kind of starting a new chapter, a new set of stories. And it says, Joseph being 17 years old. So let's pause for a second and let's remember who Joseph is. At this point, now we left off in chapter 35. For the few of you that maybe remembered that and you're going, wait a second, did we just skip some stuff?

I'm going to read back and find out what we skipped. I'll tell you real quick. We left off in chapter 35. They move towards Bethel. God protects them. Then they live in Bethel for a little while.

They move from Bethel. Rachel dies in childbirth. Rachel is one of Jacob's four wives. You really should only have one. He has four. She's his favorite.

If you have multiple wives in the Bible, you're not supposed to have a favorite. So he's messed this up in multiple ways. But he has multiple wives. He has a favorite. She passes in giving birth to what she names, her son, who she names Ben-Oni, which means son of my strength or son of my sorrow. And his dad changes his name to Benjamin, which means son of my right hand.

And he's honoring his wife and acknowledging that he's lost a part of himself. That is Joseph's little brother. So his favorite wife has two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, who are the second to last and last of his children. And so he's got 10 older sons from his other wives. He's got these two sons. That's who Joseph is.

He's second youngest and first son of Rachel. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. All right.

So Bilhah and Zilpah had four sons, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And when it says he was a boy with them, it does not mean that they were all, they were friends and all the same age. It means he was their boy. He was their small boy. He was their lad. He was their runner.

So they were teaching him how to tend the flock. And he was running back and forth and having to do all the things they said and working for them. And he brings a bad report. He goes and tells his father that they're not doing right. Now we don't know what they were doing.

It just says he brought a bad report. He tells them that either they're sinning or they're not treating him well. I remember when we were little, I have an older brother and a younger brother. And my older brother kept demanding that me and my younger brother do things. He would send us to do things. He would send us on errands.

We were his small boys because he was older than us. And my mom and dad fussed at him and told him to stop doing this. And then one day we were down playing in the woods. We had a little camp and we said our, I can still remember vividly, he was like three or four at this point, him dragging a two liter Mountain Dew down to us from our house. It was almost as big as he was but we had sent him to get us a drink so he brought a two liter Mountain Dew which is a brilliant choice on the part of a four year old. My parents fussed at us and said, y'all have got to quit telling Vince, making him run all your errands and do all this stuff for you.

And my older brother looks at him and says, Mama, you gotta fuss at Chet. Don't fuss at me, you gotta fuss at Chet because every single time I tell Chet to do something he turns right around and tells Vince to do it. But there's this dynamic here where these four have this small boy Joseph and Joseph goes to his father and he gives a bad report and we don't know, we don't know, there's two kind of ways to give a bad report. There's a way that you tell on someone that is for your own benefit. You're telling on them just to make yourself look good, just to puff yourself up. I remember going to my dad one time and I was doing a service for the family because every time my older brother did something wrong, I would let my parents know.

They needed to know these things. They needed to stay on top of his behavior and his actions. And so I went to tell on him one time and I remember my dad looking at me and going, he just looked disgusted. He just stood there looking at me for a while and I was like, this is not the right response. Maybe I was thinking, yeah, that's right, we should be disgusted at Logan's behavior. I don't know.

He just, but I could tell it was like aimed at me and it was just like, okay. And then he said, you're just a little snitch, aren't you? Just a little rat fink, which y'all should use in real life from now on. Rat fink is an amazing term to call people. And he called me a rat fink and he said, you're just a little tattletale. He said, look, I don't want to hear it anymore.

It's you and your brother against me. It's not me and you against your brother. That'd be messed up. I'm not on your team. Quit, quit narking on your brother all the time. And I just remember thinking, but the whole reason he was doing that was because the only reason I was telling on him was to make myself look good.

It wasn't that I was actually genuinely worried about my brother and his character and his life and his health. I just wanted him to get in trouble because it made me look good and I enjoyed watching him be in trouble. There's also a genuine, heartfelt what they're doing is wrong and giving a bad report. We don't know which one he did. Best guess though is that he did this in integrity, in honesty, just because as you watch this play out, his brothers aren't very good people and he seems to genuinely handle things well. So as best we can watch, they don't seem to have a lot of integrity.

Joseph seems to, so it seems as if he's given a genuine report of they're not doing some things right and he's not a rat fink, if you will. He does tell on them. It says this, it says he brings a bad report which is a good way to make your brothers not like you, whether they're wrong or not. That's a really good way to make them not like you. So they're already reading into this.

They would be frustrated with him. Now Israel, that's his daddy, loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, which is a problem. That's the same thing that Jacob, who's also Israel, that's the same thing his dad did. It caused him a lot of problems. He's turned right around and done the same thing. Because he was the son of his old age.

And he made him a robe of many colors. We don't, that robe, that thing could be a robe of many colors. It could be a robe that was like sparkly or shiny. It could be a robe that had long sleeves. We don't really know. The only other place this is used in the Old Testament is to describe an outfit that a princess is wearing.

So what we do know is that Joseph looked fabulous. He was shiny and colorful and sparkly in his princess outfit. It was amazing. I'm sure his brothers envied him and mocked him because that's how brothers would work. And so he gets this fancy outfit. His dad shows great honor to him, privilege to him.

And in some ways it's treating him the way he ought to treat the firstborn son. And he's messing up the birth order from Reuben down to Joseph. But Joseph is the firstborn of Rachel. So there's this weird favoritism that's plaguing this family. And it says, but when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Some of you who have siblings know what that is like.

You go through these stages where it's like your siblings cannot talk nicely to you, cannot speak nicely to you. You come in and you're like, hey, what's going on? They're like, shut up, get out of here, Steve. Like, whatever. Like, you just have this kind of, this animosity that grows and this happens. And I want you to know this.

Parents, you have a role to play in how your children get along with one another. Seems as if Israel is further fueling this the same way his dad did, but you have a role to play. There's a family in our church family that has a get-along shirt that they make their two children wear at once so that they'll get along. My dad used to make us hug. You have, after we had fought, you have a role to play in trying to help them get along, and he's not, and it's further dividing, and they cannot even speak to him without being cruel to him. So Joseph, this is verse 5, now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.

He said to them, hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf. So he says, we were binding grain, my sheaf stood up, looking good, and all y'all's little sheaves that y'all put together just came right around and bowed down to mine. What y'all think about that dream? His brothers said to him, are you indeed to reign over us, or are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me. But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come and bow ourselves to the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. All right, we've got to talk a second about dreams.

Immediately, they understood when he tells them this dream, they understood that this ought to be understood in a prophetic way. That there's meaning behind it and so they're saying, oh, are you prophesying to us? Are you telling us that your dream tells the future and that we're going to bow to you? And that's why his dad fusses at him and says, oh, me and your mama are going to bow to you. They were the sun and the moon and your brothers are going to bow to you. Really?

So they understood it to be prophetic. Now, let's talk about dreams for just a second. There's kind of three ways to think about dreams. There's a group in here probably that just believes dreams are just dreams. They don't mean anything. They're your brain keeping itself occupied while you're asleep.

Like if you dream that you had to build a golf cart with your old PE teacher, probably just a dream. You're not waking up thinking, oh, wow, in the future I'm going to have to build a golf cart with my, like it just seems like it's a dream. Like dreams are just dreams. They're just random things. Some people would say, well, no, dreams tell you a lot about yourself. You can study them for psychology.

You can study them to know more about yourself. Like I have a dream periodically where I get up to preach and I, for some reason, have folded my notes into a tiny little thing and then I'm immediately trying to unfold them up here and I can't get them unfolded. The truth is that's exactly what I did the first time I ever preached. I had written all my notes on a yellow sheet of memo pad, had it wadded up in my pocket and got up and it was one of those lecterns with the microphone right here and then just like sweatingly unfolded it while I was sitting here and I don't do that anymore. Crisp, clean sheets of paper.

But I have that dream. I have dreams sometimes where I can't read the Bible or y'all keep moving so like I'll find it, I'll get ready, I'll look up and I'm facing the wrong way. There's that middle zone. I think it means I'm stressed out when I have that dream. Sometimes you have dreams where you're having to give a presentation at work and suddenly, you know, my wife periodically have dreams where her teeth fall out and that kind of stuff. It's just like I have dreams where my contacts are as big as dinner plates.

I can't put them in my eye. Now some of you who study this are going, oh no, I've just learned seven things about you. We can talk later. And then there's other people who are going, no, dreams are prophetic. They're from God. They're dreams that will tell you things that you need to know, reality that's around, things that are coming.

And the answer to this, yeah, okay, some dreams are just dreams. You wake up, you're like, that was weird. You move on with your day. Or, you know, you wake up and you're like, that was weird. I'll be mad at my husband for the rest of the day. Whatever, however you choose to do that.

Then there's the middle zone of like, yeah, maybe it does tell you about something you've been thinking about, something you've been worried about, something you're stressed about. I wouldn't put too much weight there trying to figure out all the secrets of your soul from dreams, but okay. And then yeah, biblically, some dreams are prophetic. We're going to see that throughout the story of Joseph. We're going to get to see that more. The New Testament carries that out.

There are prophetic dreams in the New Testament. When Peter stands up and preaches at Pentecost, he says, your young men, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. It's this prophecy about coming true through the Holy Spirit. That happens. So what do we do?

In general, you don't want to place too much weight on dreams. You want to place some weight. There's room for them to be prophetic, for them to be from the Holy Spirit. But the New Testament also gives warning. It says that people can be puffed up by visions. They can be led astray by dreams.

So we don't want to give them all the weight in the world. We would share them in community under the weight of Scripture. We would discuss them. You could let other people in on them. You can keep them to yourself and just wait and see what happens. Wouldn't make all my life decisions off of dreams.

And we can do what Jacob does here and keep it in mind. Try to pay attention to it. Ask the Lord about it. Talk about it in community. Let Scripture bear weight on it. Make sure you don't run off after them.

Maybe you feel like you need to pray for somebody. Trust that. Walk with people in it. But we don't place too much weight on them. If you want to talk more about that would be interested too. We will talk more about it as well in upcoming sermons.

That's all we can give it right now. He has dreams. They understood him to be prophetic. He understood him to be prophetic. And so they move forward in the story. His father keeps this in mind.

Pick up 12. Now his brothers went to pasture their flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send them to you. And he said to him, Here am I. So he said to him, Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock and bring me word.

So he sent him from the valley of Hebron and he came to Shechem. All right, let's pause for just a second. He's no longer their small boy. He's not with them anymore. We don't know if that just means sometimes he did this, sometimes he didn't. When they travel off, maybe he just stays closer to home.

He is 17, which means he's in between being an adult and being a boy. They would not count you in a census as prepared for war until you were 20. And so there is some room here, especially for those of you who are in that 15, 16, 17, 18 range. There are some times where it's perfectly fine to be in your parents' household, to be leaning into them for wisdom, to be asking them for help, to be living under that roof. And there are other times where you need to be capable, like he is, to be doing some work. His dad's sending him three or four days away on his own to go find out about his brothers and to give a report.

If you're 16, 17 years old, can you be at home by yourself for three or four days? Are you incapable of doing that? Are you capable of doing that? There's time to be willing to grow and to carry some weight and also to be understanding that I'm still able to lean into my parents and walking that out and trying to work towards health. And that's where he is. So he's sent out on his own 60 or so miles away to find his brothers.

Verse 15, And a man found him wandering in the fields and the man asked him, What are you seeking? And he said, I'm seeking my brothers. He said to him, Tell me, please, where have they been pasturing? Where they are pasturing the flock? And the man said to him, They have gone away for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

That's another 20 miles. That's another day or so journey. So Joseph's just walking around fields like this. They walk over a hill. Somebody sees him and says, What are you looking for? He says, My brothers and our stuff, do you know where they went?

And they said, Yeah, I heard them say they were going on to Dothan. And then he heads on to Dothan. He doesn't head home and say, I didn't find them. He finishes the job and he heads on to Dothan. They saw him from afar. Before he came near to them, they conspired against him to kill him.

Okay, so his brothers see him headed towards him. Now, if you know someone and you're familiar with them, a lot of times you can recognize them from a distance. You can tell how they walk. You can kind of tell, Okay, this is this person. I know this person. I don't know this person.

If that person that you know is wearing a splendid rhinestone coat that they wear all the time, you can tell them from a distance easier. And he's wearing his splendid coat. They see him and they go, Okay, here's colorful. Joseph headed our way and they decide, When he gets here, let's kill him. They said to one another, Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of these pits.

Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him and we will see what will become of his dreams. So his brothers hated him. Then they hated him more. Then they hated him even more. Then they see him and they decide, Let's kill him.

Some of you have been betrayed, harmed by family. And it is some of the most harmful thing that can happen. And his brothers, his ten older brothers decide, Let's kill him. And they go about this the way that we go about things. They slowly let it grow and fester in their souls so that eventually it seems like a really good idea to do something absolutely evil and wicked. Some of you right now, if we said, Would you ever do this?

Would you ever do this? You'd say, No. But the truth is, you've already planted the seed and you're already letting it grow. An oak tree doesn't seem like it would come from an acorn, but if you plant it in the ground and it has the right circumstances, it can grow. And some of us right now are fostering bitterness, are fostering lust, are fostering hatred. We're watering it and we're letting it grow and eventually it leads to really heinous action so that we do things we never would have thought we would have done.

And that's what his brothers decide, Let's just kill him. And then, and then we'll see about his little special dreams. When he's dead, we'll see who bows down to him. Verse 21, But when Reuben, that's the oldest brother, the firstborn, he'd had some weight in the family, heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, Let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood, throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him. And he said this, that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.

So Reuben tries to protect him. Now, he's not in the strongest position. He's the firstborn, but he can't just tell him, No, we're not going to do that. Y'all are wrong. I think he probably fears they might turn on him. If they'll kill Joseph, who's Jacob's favorite, they might just kill Reuben as well.

So he just says, No, don't kill him. Just throw him in the pit, in the wilderness. Kind of saying, We'll just let him starve and die, but that way we won't have his blood on our hands. But Reuben's plan was to go get him out. So when Joseph came to his brothers, verse 23, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit.

The pit was empty. There was no water in it. He finally sees his brothers. He's been on this trip for days. He's probably like, Oh, here we go. Good.

He may even have some things he was supposed to bring him. We know he was supposed to find out how it was going and give a report. He shows up to his brothers, probably felt like something's a little off here. His brothers gather around him. They rip his robe off of him and they throw him in a pit. Now, he had 10 older brothers.

This probably was a bit of a struggle, but not exceedingly difficult. We can guess that maybe Ruben wasn't really hands-on here, so maybe nine. I don't know if you've ever fought nine people. Unless your name is Jackie Chan, you lost. That's usually how that goes. Because, you know, they don't do the one-at-a-time thing like they do in movies.

And so he is thrown in a pit fairly easily, and I think probably very confused, very hurt. He's the youngest. He's not actually seeking this relationship to be bad. He probably is hurt over how this has all gone down anyway. And now he sees his brothers and they harm him. And they throw him in this pit.

And it's a man-made pit. It would have been used as like a cistern. He can't get out of it. It's probably steep-walled. Kind of like a well. They threw him in a well.

That's kind of how that works. So he fell in at the pit. All right. And then, 25, then they sat down to eat. So they don't even care.

They're not worried about him. And they just throw him in there. And they sit down and start eating. And looking up, they see, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels, bearing gum and balm and myrrh on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, he's one of the older ones, what profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood?

Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and let not our hand be upon him. For he is our brother, our own flesh. So he says, it's probably bad if we kill him. Let's just sell him and make some money off of this deal. His brothers listened to him. Then the Midianite traders passed by and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver.

They took Joseph to Egypt. So Joseph had been in Hebron. He'd headed to Shechem, then to Dothan. These guys are coming around from Gilead down to Egypt. They sell him. He heads all the way down over here to Egypt.

He's now very far from where he started. It says, when Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he tore his clothes and returned to his brothers and said, the boy is gone and I, where shall I go? So what he's saying is I'm going to have to pay life for life on this that we lost our brother, that this is under my leadership as the firstborn. He tears his clothes and he says, what have y'all done and where shall I go? Doesn't seem like he's super worried about Joseph. He doesn't say, where did he go?

He says, where shall I go? Then they took Joseph's robe, this is verse 31, and slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood and they sent the robe of many colors and brought it to their father and said, this we have found. Please identify whether it is your son's robe or not. And he identified it and said, it is my son's robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without a doubt torn to pieces.

In this countryside, they would have had lions, they would have had bears. It was not out of the question that someone would be attacked and killed. And his sons do the same thing to him that he did to his father. They slaughter a goat in order to trick their father away from his favorite son. It's the same thing Jacob did when he pretended to be Esau. And it's the same thing they do to Jacob here.

And Jacob and his family are living out patterns. So he sees it and he says, yes, this is my son and they've, he's obviously been killed by a wild animal. Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, no, I shall go down to Sheol to my son mourning. He just says, I'm going to be sad until I die. Thus, his father wept for him.

Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of the Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. Now, if you've ever been watching a show and something terrible happens and then it just ends and you're like, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no. And then you wait till, okay, I can't wait till the next episode and the next episode picks up and tells you nothing about what just happened in the last episode. That's what happens here. Next week, we're just going to read about Judah and Tamar. The text intentionally says, meanwhile, he's a slave and then just moves on to something else.

It's a Old Testament cliffhanger that we don't know what's going to happen with Joseph. We're just kind of stuck here. And the truth is, Joseph is just kind of stuck. His life was going well. He has 11 brothers. He's the favorite.

They have regular coats. He has a magnificent coat. His dad loves him more than his brothers. Now, we don't know how he handled that. We don't know if he was gracious with it, but he also has these dreams that he, maybe in his youth and naïveness, naivety, tells them what his dream is. And maybe he was bragging a little bit.

We don't know, but he has these dreams from God that say, they're going to bow down to me. He's going to have this position of power. He's going to, in the future, things are going to go really well for him, not only as his brothers, but his dad and his mom. Like, he goes and tells them these dreams. Like, what do y'all think this means? I think it means it's going to be awesome in the future.

He goes, he's working hard. He goes and sees his brothers and immediately thrown into a pit. They save his life, barely, sold into slavery, and everything that was going to happen in his future is taken away. As best he can tell, his whole future, his whole plans, his whole idea of how things were going to work, the way he had marked it out, the way he had mapped it out is just gone. And he's just stuck. I love the word meanwhile there.

Meanwhile, while everything else is going on, he's a slave. And I think sometimes we feel like that. Like, that's how our life works. Like, you, while everybody else was having a good time, while everybody else was advancing at work, while everybody else was having things go well for them, meanwhile, I lost my job. Meanwhile, my family fell apart. Meanwhile, my health deteriorated.

For some of you who are older, maybe you felt this very distinctly when you went to high school reunions, that sometimes you felt like you were showing up and you had the meanwhile story. Oh, you became a doctor. Well, meanwhile, I gained 30 pounds. And, you know, I'm really kind of between things right now. You just feel this on you and that's where he is. He feels, he's stuck.

And we don't get any extra part of the story here. And so what do you do in those moments? What do you do when you're stuck? What did he do? Well, we'll find out later that one of the things he does is he trusts the dreams that he had. He trusts what God had already told him.

He understood that those were prophetic and he trusts them. He believes in them. He would hold on to those, lean back into those, know that this is something that God had said so that regardless of how the situation seemed to be working right now, he could lean back into that. And some of you were like, neat. That sounds nice. I have had zero special dreams.

I've had some weird ones, but none that I'm like, when I get sad, I'll think about that dream and feel good again. That's not how they work. And you're going, I don't have anything special from God that he's told me that I can hold on to in the middle of this crisis, in the middle of this pain. And I would tell you that you're wrong, you have something better. Hebrews chapter one says this, and we'll have it on the screen. It says, long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

That means that God specifically spoke to people to give a message that this dream is prophetic, that he speaks in a way to declare what his will was, what he was doing, what he was about, what was going to happen. And then it says, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed to the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. That through Jesus, he has spoken definitively and clearly that he loves us, that he's good, that he's the heir of all things, that he's the creator of the world and that there's hope fully and forever in Jesus, that he has spoken through Christ to us, that you have something better than a dream, you have the person and work of Jesus who has gone before us and who our hope is in forever. There was a story written in the middle of the 1800s called The Princess and the Goblin.

There's this princess, her name's Irene. She lives in a castle. She dresses very similarly to Joseph. It doesn't say that, but I'm just helping you picture it here. She lives in a castle. She's kind of by herself and she doesn't know, but there's a goblin kingdom that's near her castle and they've decided that they're going to try to rule again.

She's very lonely. She's wandering around the castle. She enters into this room and she finds her great-great-grandmother who is actually a fairy, as some great-great-grandmothers are. And she starts to talk with her and she gets to building this relationship with her great-great-grandmother. She goes and visits her often. And one of the things that happens is there's some bad things that happen.

Eventually, her great-great-grandmother gives her a ring and it's a magic ring and it has a thread on it that only Irene can see. It's a very thin thread and the grandmother says, if you ever are in danger, put this under your pillow and then grab the thread and follow the thread and it'll lead you to safety and it'll lead you to me. There's this time that comes where the goblins attack the castle. She puts the ring under her pillow. She grabs it and she starts following the thread. And as she heads out of the castle, she comes around and she sees that the thread leads her directly into the goblin's lair.

She just keeps following the thread in her fear and then finally the thread winds and it turns into a giant pile of rocks. She's terrified and heartbroken. This is awful. And she tries to follow the thread back to get out of the cave, but that's not how the thread works. It only goes forward. So after being sad for a while and being confused for a while, she decides, well, I might as well just follow the thread.

That's my best option. So she starts digging the rocks out. She's soon bleeding, soon crying as she tries to get these rocks out. Her fingers are hurt and as she digs them out, she finds hidden in the rocks was a prison and she finds her best friend, Kurti, who was trapped by the goblins. And Kurti's like, how on earth did you know I was here? She said, I'm just following the thread and now I see why it brought me here.

And she says, let's keep following the thread and Kurti says, no, we got to get out. That thread doesn't lead the right way and she says, all I can do is follow the thread. And she follows it and she follows it and she follows it and sometimes it leads to places that seem like there would be utter despair and destruction there, but she follows the thread and eventually she makes it to her great-great-grandmother and she makes it to safety and the thread was trustworthy because her great-great-grandmother was trustworthy. Pastor Tim Keller was writing about that story and he says this, he says, if you asked a seven-year-old, I'd like you to write me an essay on what it's like to fall in love and get married.

He says, when you read the essay, you'll say it isn't very close to the reality. We've got some parts right, but in general, doesn't really understand the process. He says, a seven-year-old can't really imagine what love and marriage will be like and he says, when you start to follow Jesus, you're at least that far away. You're at least that far away from understanding what this is going to look like. You have no idea how far you'll have to go. Jesus just says, follow me and sometimes you'll be following him and you'll be asking, why on earth are you bringing me here?

That's Joseph's story. God has a plan. God's made a promise, but it doesn't look like it's going to work out, but God is sovereign over all of it. Joseph's brothers haven't overpowered God. They haven't outwitted him. And for us, as we follow Jesus, a lot of times we just have a thread and all we can do is go forward.

It only goes that way. And sometimes we're going to hit places that we think, why on earth am I here? How on earth are you going to bring good out of this? But we have good and beautiful promises that are sealed. All the promises of God find their yes in Jesus. And they're sealed in him that he will take all things and turn them to good.

That he will make our suffering matter. That he'll bring glory out of it. That he brings hope in darkness and that we can trust and follow him. And we're not to turn back. We're just to hold on. We're to hold on to the fact that we know that Jesus has gone before us.

That he's suffered more than we have. That he's loved more than we have. That he's been tempted more than we have. And that he's walked it out in faithfulness and we can trust him. And that's our hope. So in those moments of just being stuck, trust that he's good.

That he knows what he's doing. And that you can follow him forward even though it doesn't look like it'll work out. Because he's gone before us. The band's going to come back up. We're going to take communion. If you're a follower of Jesus, one of the ways that we remind ourselves that he is good, that he has gone before us, that our hope is in him, that his promises come true, is that we remember his death in our place, on our behalf.

And so we'll take bread and we'll dip it in the cup to remind us of his body that was broken for us and his blood that was shed for us and to remind us that he has gone before us and our hope is in him. So we'll take a moment if you need to confess and repent of sin, if you need to go to Jesus with your anxiety and your fear and then we'll take communion together. If you are not a Christian, we would ask that you do not take communion because it is something that is for Christians. And in a moment after you've taken communion, we'll stand, we'll sing together one final song. So let's pray.

God, we thank you that you're good and that you go before us and that our hope is in you. We love you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Joseph

Joseph

Raz Bradley

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Hey everyone. It's good to see you this morning. My name is Raz. And if you're here for the first time, you've come in at the midway point of a five-week series called Bible Stories. And in this series, we're looking at a bunch of Old Testament stories that everyone's at least vaguely familiar with. And we're zooming out and we're looking at the big picture of the whole Bible and what God's story says about those stories in the Old Testament.

Now, it might be your first time hearing this. If you haven't been with us so far in this series, it might be your first time hearing this. And I'm sorry that I might be the one to break your heart first thing on a Sunday morning. But the Bible was not written about you. I know that it's very easy to want to see ourselves in the Bible. It's very easy to want to picture ourselves as the hero of many stories.

But the Bible isn't about you. The Bible isn't about me. And I think I would be a great main character. But I'm not. And Jesus, luckily, is the main character of the Bible. And if anyone's going to be a better character than me, it may as well be Jesus.

Today, we're going to be looking at the Old Testament story of Joseph. The story is 13 chapters long. It cripples my soul. I'm a perfectionist. And it cripples my soul that we're going to have to skip bits. And it pains me to skip bits.

I love to dig into every individual word to find out what that word means in its context. But we're going to have to skip chapters at a time. We're going to have to summarize chapters. We're going to have to read just certain specific points. But we've got to power through because it's a 13-chapter-long story.

And we're going to cover it all today. So be aware that there's going to be summarized chunks. We're going to be skipping chunks. If you have one of these little timeline aid things that Chet was talking about earlier, if you don't, you can just feel free to go walk and get one now. There's a bunch of them up the back. Like, Joseph is kind of near the top.

Joseph is still in Genesis. And last week we looked at Noah. Noah's right up there under Adam. Joseph is 13 generations after Noah. So we don't know exactly how much time that was, but we know it was 13 generations.

And the biggest, most important thing that's happened between last week and this week, between Noah and between Joseph, is Abraham. Abraham made a covenant with God. You can read about it in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15. God promised Abraham three major things. He promised him he would have a big family, that his family would outnumber the stars. And that was a big promise given that Abraham was super old and had no kids at the time.

He promised the promised land to Abraham, which we know of as kind of the Israel area. And he promised that God's blessing would flow through his family to the nations. And as we look at the story of Joseph today, we're going to see a little bit of that blessing as it kind of sinks down through his family. Before we jump into the story of Joseph, I'm going to pray for us and then we can open up to Genesis 37. Let's pray.

Father God, we thank you that you have a great main character of your story and that we get to learn about him week to week in our community groups and on Sundays as we gather together. We pray in thanks that you love us enough to send a savior in the form of your son. And we pray that you can teach him, teach us about him today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Now, this first bit of the story is probably the most familiar. We're going to be looking at Genesis 37 to begin with. And this is, for you musical fans, the section where the whole Joseph and the Technicolor dreamcoat kind of kicks in. It doesn't stick around for very long, though, as we'll learn. We're going to start in 37 verse 2. It's on page 20 if you've got one of these Bibles.

If you don't own a Bible for yourself, these Bibles are kind of scattered around the place. You're free to take one of these. We want you to have a Bible. So if you don't own one, just grab one of these and go home with it. We won't mind. We're going to start in verse 2.

It says, These are the generations of Jacob. Jacob is Joseph's father, and he also has the name Israel. So in a moment, he's going to turn up and he's going to be called Israel. It's the same guy. It's Joseph's dad. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers.

He was a boy with the sons of Bilhar and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Okay, so we've got a weird family already. There's multiple wives. Joseph has 10 older brothers, and they're spread across all the different wives. And Joseph, our boy, brings a bad report of them to their father.

He is a tattletale. He's got 10 older brothers, and he rats them out to their dad. He's not starting well. Verse 3. Now Israel, that's his dad.

That's Jacob. Same guy. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made for him a robe of many colors, also known as a technicolor dreamcoat. But when his brothers saw that his father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

So we've got a frustrating family. A family that most of us would not want to be a part of. There's actually four wives, four mothers. That would be tough. He picks favorite sons and gives them gifts that the other sons don't get. And the sons hate him for it.

This sibling rivalry playing a part. Joseph doesn't help his cause by being a tattletale. Kind of shoots himself in the foot there. He's probably not the most popular kid around, and we're going to read just now about how he makes his problem worse. Verse 5. Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more.

Good Job, Joseph. He said to them, Hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field. And behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around my sheaf and bowed themselves down to my sheaf. His brothers said to him, Are you indeed to reign over us?

Or are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Nice one, Joseph. Crushing it, playing the younger brother card, and telling your brothers that they're all going to bow down to you, metaphorically from a dream. Killing it, Joseph. You're working yourself up.

It's just kind of sad to see him dig a hole that he's already dug even deeper. Now, Joseph, he has a second dream after this. We're not going to read about it. He does have a second dream. And the second dream is similar to the first one, except he dreams that the sun and the moon and 11 stars all bow down to him. And then he doesn't tell it just to his brothers.

He tells it to his whole family, including his moms and dad. And they complain to him. And they say, So what? You think that our entire family is going to bow down to you? And they rebuke him, tell him to can it, and to sit in his hole and be quiet. Now, time passes, and the ten older brothers are out.

They're shepherds. They're pasturing the flock. That means that they're out sending the sheep out and looking after them out in the wilderness or whatever. They're not necessarily close to home. They didn't really have fields like we do. And so they're out shepherding the flock, pasturing the flock.

And Jacob, which is the dad, sends Joseph out to check on his brothers, to see that they're doing okay, to bring back a report, let him know if everything's going okay. We're going to pick this up in verse 17. It's at the top of page 21. In these Bibles, anyway. It says, So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. They saw him from afar.

And before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him. And we will see what will become of his dreams. But when Reuben heard it, Reuben is his eldest brother, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, Let us not take his life.

And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit here in the wilderness. But do not lay a hand on him. That he, that's Reuben, might rescue him, that's Joseph, out of their hand to restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the Technicolor dream coat, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him in a pit.

The pit was empty. There was no water in it. Then they sat down to eat, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing gum, balm, myrrh, and they were on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him. For he is our brother, our own flesh.

And his brothers listened to him. Then Midianite trainers, Midianite traders passed by, and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt. Joseph's brothers, his family, hated him so much they were ready to kill him. But as soon as the opportunity arose, they decided they weren't going to kill him.

Instead, it would be better to make money off of him instead. And so they sold him to be a slave in a faraway country. This is sibling rivalry to the absolute extreme. Joseph is stabbed in the back, square in the back, by his brothers, his older brothers, ten of them. The guys who are supposed to love him the most are the ones who betrayed him. Can you imagine what it feels like to sit in the bottom of a pit after your brothers have just beaten you and thrown you there and overhear their conversation about how and when they're going to kill you?

And then they pull you up out of the pit and decide not to kill you, and you're relieved. And then you're heartbroken again when they tell you you're going to be sold as a slave and sent to Egypt. Well, the brothers, they've committed this crime. They've committed this sin against Joseph. But they've got to do something about it to cover it up.

Joseph is the favorite child. Jacob is not going to be happy about his disappearance. So they take his coat, they take the coat of many colors, and they cover it in animals' blood. And they take that home to Jacob and they say, look, Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. And they convince their dad that Joseph is now dead. So they hate their brother, they betray him, they sell him as a slave, and they cover up what they've done by convincing their dad that he's dead.

And we're going to pick the story up with Joseph. He's now in Egypt. And we're going to skip to chapter 39. It's at the bottom of page 21 in these Bibles. He's now in Egypt, and he's been sold to a guy called Potiphar. Verse 1 says, Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had brought him from the Ishmaelites, who had brought him down there.

The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. Okay, that's important. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, even though he was a slave. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became successful. Now, Joseph, as a successful slave, impresses his master, Potiphar, and we're going to pick it up at verse 5. It says, From that time he made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had.

The Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field, and he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, because, and because of him, he had no concern about anything but the food he ate, which is kind of interesting. You elevate this guy, who was a slave, and you say, You can control everything over my house, but you better not tell me what to eat. I'm going to eat candy for breakfast, and you cannot stop me, Joseph. That's what he says. Now, the plot kind of thickens.

It gets a little weird. Potiphar has an interesting wife. We don't learn her name, but she plays a pretty significant part of the story. In our society, we've kind of got a crass name for ladies like this. Cougar. Potiphar's wife is an incredibly blunt one at that.

Read on. It says, Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. He's 17. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, Lie with me. Subtle, right? But he refused and said to his master's wife, Behold, because of me, my master has no concern of anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge.

He is not greater than I am in his house, nor has he kept back anything from me except you because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her or lie beside her or be with her. Joseph is turning out to be an incredibly awesome dude. He's standing up under tough circumstances and sexual temptation, and it's possible that Potiphar's wife was hideous and that would be a good reason to reject her, but probably not. Potiphar was a rich guy.

He was influential. He had Pharaoh's ear. He probably had a cute wife. He was probably able to substitute her out for a younger model whenever he kind of got bored. What we see here in Joseph is actually that he's standing up righteously under really tough circumstances. Joseph's motivation might seem pure, and it is, and we read on.

Verse 11, But one day when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house were in the house, she, that's Potiphar's wife, caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me. But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. So the cougar sets up a trap and pounces, and then Joseph bails immediately. But he leaves his coat behind. And this is a side note. This isn't important.

Joseph is the only guy in the Bible to lose two coats. Do not lend coats to Joseph. It's not important, but I noticed it, so I thought I'd tell you. Well, Potiphar's wife, she doesn't like getting rejected. She doesn't handle rejection well, and she actually accuses Joseph to her husband of sexually attacking her. And she's got his jacket, so she shows him his jacket as evidence.

And so she accuses Joseph of sexually attacking her. And so Joseph gets thrown into prison as a result. So we're going to read from verse 20. And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in prison. Now, that's got to suck.

Because Joseph didn't do anything wrong. In fact, Joseph did everything right, and not just to impress Potiphar, but he actually did it for the right reasons because he feared God. Now Joseph finds himself in jail for not committing adultery. It doesn't make any sense. Can you imagine how it feels at that point in time to be Joseph? Betrayed by your brothers and sold as a slave.

Finally, things look up and you're elevated to a reasonable status in that house. And then you get accused of something you haven't done when in fact you've done the right thing by your master and by God and you end up in jail. Verse 21. But the Lord was with Joseph, and he showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.

The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. When anyone else would be swimming in their well of bitterness, Joseph finds success. He seems like a trustworthy dude. He finds himself in prison, and even as a prisoner, the prison guards put him in charge of all the other prisoners because the Lord is with him. He's a prisoner with integrity, and especially for one who ought to be a bowl of tears, who is crying and whining because life has it out for him. Now this next little section, it all happens in chapter 40.

I encourage you to read it. I'm going to summarize it for us because it's a little bit wordy. Two guys end up coming to prison with Joseph. Joseph's in charge of the prison. Like, he's still a prisoner, but he's in charge of everything that happens in there. And two guys get thrown into prison.

One of them is the cupbearer to Pharaoh. A cupbearer's an important Job. He makes sure the Pharaoh doesn't get poisoned. And the other guy's a baker for Pharaoh. So the cupbearer and the baker get thrown into jail with Joseph.

And they start having some weird dreams. They're having funky dreams, and they don't understand them. They don't know what it means for their lives. And Joseph, who's in charge, notices that they're distressed. And so he goes up to them and asks them, and they say, we're having these dreams. We need someone to explain them to us.

And Joseph says, all right, I can explain them to you. So the first guy, the cupbearer, says, I've been having this weird dream. Tell me all what it means. And Joseph says, actually, the interpretation of your dream is positive. We really, this is good news. You, you're going to be reinstated as the cupbearer to the king.

And the cupbearer is stoked. He, he gets to go back to his job. He gets to go back to being in Pharaoh's good books, and he doesn't have to be in jail anymore. And Joseph says, hey, make sure when you get out there and you have Pharaoh's ear again, remember, remember what I've done for you. Remember me. I'm kind of wasting away here in jail.

Don't forget me. And then he turns to the other guy, and the other guy, the baker, tells him his dream. And, and things get awkward pretty quick. The baker tells him his dream, and, and Joseph suddenly starts like, loosening his collar, standing out of the sun, and says, hey, bro, I've got some bad news for you. Just as the other guy was elevated back to his position, your head is going to be elevated from your shoulders. And for some reason, he tries to make a weird, poetic kind of illustration of that to be a graceful way to tell the other guy that he's going to have his head chopped off.

Nice, Joseph crushing it again. He, he tells the other guy that he's going to, that he's going to be executed in three days. And lo and behold, everything that he predicts in three days times happened. The cup bearer gets elevated back to his status, and the baker gets killed. And then we read in the very last verse of that chapter, 40 verse 23, it says, yet the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. And it really begins to start feeling like Joseph is life's punching bag.

Because he does everything right all the time and gets the tough end of the stick. He's following his dad's instructions, gets sold as a slave by his brothers. He follows Potiphar's instructions righteously and chooses not to commit adultery with his wife and gets thrown in prison. And he does right by these two guys and explains everything correctly to these two guys and then he gets forgotten. Even though he said, don't forget me. Two years go by.

Joseph has been in jail for two years. And the pharaoh himself, the ruler over all of Egypt, he starts having weird dreams. And you would think the cup bearer who's right next to him would be like, hey, I know a guy, but he doesn't. The pharaoh calls all of the wise men of Egypt, he calls all of the magicians in Egypt, anyone who might be able to tell him about his dreams and calls them all into himself and he says, guys, tell me what these dreams are all about. And they all say, we don't know. And then at that point in time when Pharaoh's losing his mind, his cup bearer says, oh, yeah, there's this guy that I promised him I wouldn't forget about him.

It was a couple years ago. Pharaoh, he's chilling in the jail. Maybe he can help you out. His name's Joseph. And so Pharaoh says, all right, give him a chance, brings Joseph up and Joseph comes before the pharaoh himself. Pharaoh explains his dreams to him and Joseph says, I can tell you what they mean.

He says, you're going to have seven good years. Seven years of plenty is what he says. And in the seven good years, you're going to have lots of crops, going to have lots of water, going to have all your animals and cattle and livestock are going to do really well. Seven really good years. And then, after the seven good years, throughout all the land is going to be seven bad years. Seven years of famine is what they say.

So there's going to be no crops, no animals, no water. There's going to be seven bad years. And what you need to do, Pharaoh, this is what Joseph said, what you need to do is put someone good and wise and knowledgeable in charge during the seven good years so that they can store up food and they can prepare for the seven bad years that are going to come later. You need to be prepared for that, otherwise everyone's going to die. And Pharaoh says to Joseph, this is chapter 41, verse 39. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has shown you all of this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are.

You shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, see, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. So Joseph has gone from favored child to slave to ruler over Potiphar's house to prisoner to ruler over prison and now he is set second in charge over all of Egypt. It's a bit of a rollercoaster of a story but it's actually only now that the story gets super interesting. We're going to sum to summarize the next couple of chapters actually.

The next couple of chapters tell the story of Joseph's family. They're back in Israel. They're back in Canaan, kind of the area on the eastern bank of the Mediterranean and they've run into this seven years of famine. No one was prepared for it. They just had seven good years and then suddenly famine hits and no one was prepared. So his family, which is quite big at this stage, Jacob is still alive.

He's the father. There's about 70 descendants in the family. So his kids have had kids, have had kids and there's 70 people in total and he's trying to look out for his family and he's trying to buy food off his neighbors but no one in the area has got food and they hear that Egypt has some food. So Jacob sends the ten older brothers of Joseph down to Egypt in search of food. And then they come down to Egypt and Joseph is in charge. And so they come before Joseph himself to beg for the right to be able to buy food.

They beg Joseph for the privilege to buy food from him because Egypt is the only place that was prepared. They walk into a room with the younger brother they betrayed years ago and they don't even recognize him. They have no idea that he's the one standing in front of them. He's a whole lot older. He's probably decked out like an Egyptian. They sold him as a slave.

They think he's either dead or serving some master in a house somewhere. And they don't even recognize that this man in front of them this powerful man who has the ability to let them die or give them food they don't recognize that's their little brother that they betrayed. But Joseph recognizes them. Joseph was never going to forget his older brothers. The ones who betrayed him and sold him as a slave. How could he forget them?

I can only imagine what would be going through my head if I was Joseph at that time. Revenge. Look at these guys. They've come in and they're bowing before me just as I had predicted. They're weak. You're weak and you're pathetic.

I should crush you. I should do back to you what you have done to me. You have made my life miserable and here's my chance to pay you back. Now I'm strong. Now I have power.

You're weak and you're pathetic. I should crush you. I should do back to you what you have done to me. You have made my life miserable and here's my chance to pay you back. Now I'm strong. Now I have power. Now I have influence and I can do whatever I want to you and I can repay all the evil that you did to me. And we read we read about Joseph and the situation that he's found him in this bizarre tone of events where he can now crush his brothers

And we're cheering for him saying get him Joseph get him lay into him get him back they betrayed you man they stabbed you in the back kill him and then he he doesn't at exactly the point in time when you would expect Joseph to repay evil for evil he chooses not to and in fact he has nothing but forgiveness and mercy and compassion

For them he sends them back to get their whole family bring the whole family down to Egypt where he can set them up for life he hooks them up he not only forgives them he sets them up so they can have the good life from there on out we're going to skip a couple chapters we're now in chapter 47 starting at verse 11 it says this is now on page 27 in these Bibles it says then Joseph

Settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt in the best of the land in the land of Ramesses as Pharaoh had commanded and Joseph provided his father his brothers and all his father's household with food according to the number of his descendants Joseph had the power he had the authority and he would have been completely justified in that moment in punishing his brothers for what they'd done to him and yet instead

He does everything that he can to look after them now soon Jacob that's the father of the whole clan Jacob that's Joseph's dad he dies and with the death of the dad suddenly all the brothers get this renewed sense of paranoia they know that Joseph was Jacob's favorite child and so Jacob loved Joseph Joseph loved Jacob back and with the death of the father

They get this renewed sense that suddenly Joseph's going to change his mind and want to punish everyone and so they send him a letter the letter's not truthful but they send him a letter and we're going to skip to the end of chapter 50 this is now on page 29 this is right at the end of Genesis in verse 15 it says when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead they said it may be that Joseph will hate us

And pay us back for all the evil that we did to him so they sent a message to Joseph saying your father gave this command before he died say to Joseph please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sins because they did evil to you and now please forgive the transgressions of the servants of the God of your father so they admit that they had done a whole lot of evil

To him and they expected it to be paid back Joseph wept when they spoke to him his brothers also came and fell down before him and said behold we are your servants but Joseph said to them do not fear for am I in the place of God as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good

To bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today so do not fear I will provide for you and your little ones and thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them now Joseph Joseph has perspective Joseph has righteous perspective and what I mean by that is that Joseph is able even in the midst of everything that's happened to zoom out

And see the entire story for what it is he sees the bigger picture and we get caught up in the details we get caught up in the pain and the hurt and the betrayal and we want we want to be justified in him taking that out on them we want justice in that and Joseph sees the bigger picture because he has perspective we would completely expect Joseph

To want to repay that evil that's our mentality we have this mentality of an eye for an eye and that's justice and yet Joseph has this higher perspective the bigger picture and he says you meant evil against me but God meant it for good it doesn't matter to Joseph that his brothers sold him as a slave because he realizes that that had to happen for him to end up in Egypt and he realizes

That once he gets to Egypt he had to rise to power and then end up in jail so that he could meet the king's cupbearer and he had to meet the king's cupbearer so that someone could tell Pharaoh that Joseph knows how to interpret dreams so that when Pharaoh has bad dreams Joseph gets to meet Pharaoh and he had to meet Pharaoh so that he could become second in charge of all of Egypt so that he could save everyone he doesn't get caught up

On the little details he sees that everything happened so that he could come to power in Egypt and keep everyone alive and this idea of perspective zooming out and seeing the bigger picture that's kind of our goal in this entire Bible stories series we want to zoom out from each individual story and see it in the grand scheme of God's story because the Bible is God's story and each one fits into it and so if we look at this story

With perspective it changes the picture see we're tempted at every stage in the story to want to be the hero we want to be we want to be like Joseph we want to stand up under sexual temptation even though that's not a reality for us we want to we want to be patient in affliction like Romans 12 says and yet that's not at all us we want to be merciful we want to have forgiveness we want to do all of these things

That we see in Joseph but it doesn't really reflect us at all and that's because that's not at all what's going on in this story if you think about it with some perspective if you zoom out like we've been talking about you see the bigger picture Joseph he suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to love him so that he could eventually save those people

Who betrayed him Joseph was able and justified in administering punishment to those people and instead shows mercy and kindness and grace to them Joseph was condemned but God required that for good and while we want to see ourselves as Joseph we want to see ourselves

In this story it doesn't sound a whole lot like us instead it sounds a whole lot more like Jesus but we still want to play a part in stories even though we shouldn't force our way into stories we still want to play a part but if we see it with this perspective if we

See it in this bigger picture we kind of play a role in the story if anyone in that story is us it's the brothers the ones who betrayed the guy who's ultimately going to save them that's us and it's it's sad it's not fun

To think about but we're we're Joseph's older brothers we betray the guy who saves us but chapter 50 verse 20 it's a game changer it's going to come up here it says as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good

To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today is there a clearer picture of the gospel than that but Joseph and this whole story is just one little man in a little region thousands and thousands

Of years ago who saves his family it's kind of a small story on the grand scheme of God's story what Jesus does for us is infinitely bigger than the story of Joseph as Joseph's brothers meant evil against

Joseph mankind as a whole meant evil against Christ to our very bones we are rebellious we consistently place our own desires our own wants and our own thoughts above that of

God and we betray him day after day after day it was mankind that crucified Jesus it was under mankind's hand that Jesus suffered unrighteously unjustly sorry not

Unrighteously and and yet God uses all of that evil that mankind did to Christ so that he could eventually die on the cross to save mankind the evil that mankind did to Christ had to happen so that

God could save everyone to bring about the many people should be kept alive that's how God's sovereignty works that's what God's plans do they happen the way that he means them

To happen and sometimes in the case of Joseph and in the case of Jesus and in the case of many others suffering has to happen for them to get from A to B suffering is the way that God gets them from Canaan to Egypt to slavery to ruling over everyone so that they

Can save everyone else's lives Joseph he he mercifully rescued his own family from starving and Jesus is completely different he's completely bigger Jesus rescues all of humanity from the consequences of their own

Sin eternal death Matt's going to make his way back up here and as we kind of land the plane there's any number of beautiful responses that we can have to a story like this

This story is a massive picture of the gospel and we can respond in many ways but I want us to zoom out and see the bigger picture I want us

To respond in light of God's plan for all of salvation you see I think we're so exposed to the idea that we are

Sinful and that God forgives us and that Jesus paid for our sin on the cross we're so exposed to that it kind of

Just washes over us in a way where it doesn't hurt anymore we don't feel the pain we don't feel the betrayal we don't

Feel the agony of it and yet we read a story like Joseph's and suddenly it's a human character it's not God anymore it's

A human and we can relate to how it feels to be betrayed we relate to how it feels to be punished when you

Don't deserve it and then we suddenly understand how crazy it is to receive mercy we understand how crazy it is to receive mercy from the

Person that you betrayed most and yet we zoom out and we realize that our situation before God is immeasurably worse than the brothers

Before Joseph we've separated ourselves from God and creator who made us to live in perfect relationship with him and we sin against him

Daily and yet he offers the same mercy to us our sin and our betrayal is immeasurably worse and his mercy and love is

Immeasurably greater and so when Joseph's brothers are given blessing and freedom even when they don't deserve it how much greater is the blessing

And freedom that we receive even though we don't deserve it how much more blessed are you in light of knowing Jesus mercy know

That he has every right just as Joseph did to punish you for your sin every right to punish me for my sin every

Right to punish all of mankind for sin yet he chooses not to instead he chooses to free you from your guilt to free

You from all that you are struggling with in life there's no more pain there's no more burden and there's no more guilt because

Of the mercy that he's shown you and you get to live a life that is set up for success you get to live

A life as he plans as you respond to him the same offer that Joseph gives to his brothers Jesus gives to us and

I pray that we can accept his offer let's pray father God we know that we know that you are powerful beyond measure and that we've sinned

Against you we pray we pray we pray that we can live according to your will for our lives we pray in thanks that

You show mercy to us when we don't deserve it we pray we repent of our sin and we pray that you will continue to bless

Us in this life so that we can become more and more like Christ who pours himself out for us so that we can

Live and so that we can live the good life we praise you we thank you and we love you amen