If you would open up your Bibles to Genesis chapter 37 in Genesis
chapter 37, where we're going to be continuing our study in the
life of Joseph. Joseph this morning.
And while you turn there, I want to welcome everyone who has made
it this morning to worship God and like the song we just sang,
we pray that His name is glorified this morning.
And what we do. I want to thank each and
everyone. If you're a visitor, please come
back. You're welcome back each and
every time that we meet here. If there's any questions
regarding the services that we have here, the operation, the
things that are said, please ask one of the brethren after
services and we'll do the best we can to answer the questions
that you may have. This is our third study in the
book of Genesis concerning Joseph.
We've already gone through kind of his early life, what it was
like for him growing up. And then the first portion of
chapter 37. And now it brings us to our
second study in chapter 37. And we'll begin reading in verse
18, verse 18, and we'll read through the end of the chapter.
And it says there now that when they saw him afar off, even
before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill
him. Then they said to one another,
Look, this dreamer is coming, come, therefore let us now kill
him and cast him into some pit, and we shall say some wild
beasts has devoured him. We shall see what will become of
his dreams. But Reuben heard it, and he
delivered him out of their hands, and said, Let us not kill
him. And Reuben said to them, Shed no
blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness,
and do not lay a hand on him, that he might deliver him back
out of their hands and bring him back to his father.
So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, they
had stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors
that was on him. Then they took him and cast him
into a pit, and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
And they sat down to eat a meal. Then they lifted their eyes and
looked, and there was a company of Ishmaelites coming from
Gilead with their camels bearing spices, bomb and mirror myrrh on
their way to carry them down to Egypt.
So Judas said to their brothers, what prophet is there if we kill
our brother and conceal his blood?
Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let us not, let
not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, and our flesh
and his brothers. Listen.
Then the Midianite traders pass by.
So the brothers pulled Joseph up, up and out and lifted him
out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels
of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.
Then Reuben returned to to the pit, and indeed Joseph was not
in the pit, and he tore his clothes and he returned to his
brothers and said, the lad is gone, the lad is no more, and I,
where shall I go? So they took Joseph's tunic.
Kill the kid of goats and dip the tunic in the blood.
Then they sent the tunic of many colors, and they brought it to
their father and said we have found this.
Do you know whether it is your son's tunic or not?
And he recognized it and said It is my son's tunic.
A wild beast has devoured him. Without doubt, Joseph is torn
into pieces. Then Jacob tore his clothes, put
sackcloth on his waist, and mourn for his son many days.
And all his sons and his daughters arose to comfort him.
But he refused to be comforted, and said, For I shall go down
into the grave to my son. This in mourning.
Thus his father wept for him. Now the Midianites had sold him
into Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and a captain
of the guard. We'll be studying these few
verses here this morning. The last time we saw Joseph,
Joseph was the object of his father's special interest.
He was the object of his brother's hatred, and he was the
object of God's providential care.
And I mentioned that there's probably no greater illustration
in the Old Testament of the truth of God's providential care
that we've been kind of been touching on here recently, which
we find in the life of Joseph. Joseph was not at the mercy of
chance or fate. He was not driven along by some
blind impersonable force and nor, nor are we, Jesus says to
his disciples in Matthew 6, He says, why worry about the
things? Why worry about this?
Why worry about that? And the next thing he said,
leave that to the pagans, He says to worry about all that.
Just leave that to them. Just keep your eyes on me and
I'll take care of you. He says, for there's not a
Sparrow that falls to the ground that I am not aware of.
And the very grass of the field is clothed by my mighty power.
And Jesus is going to look after them is what he says.
So in other words, it's a wonderful picture of as well, a
truth that we see in Romans 828. It says we know that in all
things Paul writes, God works for the good of those who love
him, and those have been called to his purpose.
And all of our days, all of our desires, all of our hopes, all
of our heartaches, our fears, our failures are being worked
out by God in the end. And we're thankful for that, the
loving, compassionate care of God.
So with our focus on Joseph, I want to notice a few things.
Joseph was sent back to his brothers.
We see in verse 14 here, a little earlier in the chapter
than the verses that we're going to study.
And Joseph was sent to check on his brothers, 17 years old,
obedient to his father's directive.
He was given the responsibility of going to check on the
well-being of his brothers and what they're doing and actually
to see how the flock of sheep are doing.
He said. His dad says, Joseph, I want you
to go. I want you to check in your
brothers. I want to check on the flock and
bring back word to me straightforward instructions,
very clear, very understandable. And every father really wants to
teaches their kids this responsibility.
Everybody, everyone who's a father understands this.
To increasingly give our children opportunity to force
them into areas where they're going to have to figure things
out. Sometimes put our kids in
situations, let them go ahead and and take care of things on
their own to to hopefully they find their responsibilities and
in the end be standing on the road 2 feet.
And Jacob in the process of doing this, perhaps
understanding the disasters maybe he took on with his other
sons, his other children, maybe has a different way of teaching
his son Joseph. So he says, I want you to go.
I want you to check and I want you to report back.
And so Joseph, go ahead and takes off from his father's
house down the road. And as he went off down the
road, he could never have imagined that it would be 20
long years before he ever looked into the eyes of his father
again. 20 long years before he got another hug from his dad, 20
long years before he had conversations to enjoy the
warmth of his father, to to just be in the company of his father.
He never knew that. The poet says parting is such
sweet sorrow. So now I want to think about
this for a moment. Do you think his dad, do you
think Jacob watched his son Joseph leave the house, walk
down the road? I would say yes, I would think
he did. I would think that that Jacob
watched him walk away and we think he said goodbye, waved
goodbye. Of course, we think he's waved
goodbye and said goodbye. And I personally think that his
father maybe watched him a long way, watched him walk a far
distance, walking out into the distance and his dad just kind
of watching and watching and watching as he parted every gaze
of his father, even in the distance was a gaze of gaze of
love and compassion that that father had for his son.
And fathers, we understand this. We often if we not always find
ourselves praying for our children when they're away,
praying for our kids when they're going to do something on
their own. We pray for them.
We say, Lord bless this child, watch over him, keep him and
bring him back safely. Us as fathers understand that
for any kid and mothers as well. But I want to say that there is
a last time for every journey. There is a last time for every
goodbye. We'll never know when the last
goodbye is that we say to a loved one, the last goodbye that
we'll say to our wife. We'll never know when it's the
last time to maybe hug or kiss our mothers goodbye.
We'll never know when that day is.
And so it's good to make a big deal out of saying goodbye to
one another. It's a good idea to make much of
our goodbyes and much of our hellos.
So I don't want us to miss the chances in the common simple
everyday events that we have in our life to cherish these
moments. So we just picture in our mind
Joseph saying see you dad, I'll be back.
See you dad, see you Joseph, have a good trip, come back
soon. Come back safe.
Just do what I told you to do, report and come back.
See you dad. I'll be back soon.
And I think those words may have must have rung in Jacob's head
for 20 years before he saw his son Joseph again.
It must have been the last statement from his son that he
heard at that time that he believed.
And so in verse 15, we can only imagine Joseph wandering,
wandering around in the fields comes upon a random guy and, and
this guy says to Joseph, you know, what are you looking for?
Joseph says, I'm looking for my brothers.
They're somewhere out here with the flocks.
And this guy tells Joseph, well, they've gone ahead and moved on
a few more miles over to Dothan. And so Joseph goes to Dothan,
and we can imagine as he wonders, maybe Joseph is
thinking in his mind where where his brothers are AT and the
potential reception that he's going to receive from his
brothers. You know, absence makes the
heart grow fonder, right? Lizzie and I were just talking
about this the other day. Being a part makes you grow
fonder of each other, right? Theoretically.
Well, not in Joseph's case. You know, maybe Joseph's
weren't, you know, worrying a little bit more.
How are they going to speak to him?
Were they going to start speaking to him at all now?
Or they're still going to hate him?
You know, are they going to abuse him?
Maybe Joseph wondered about his dreams while he was out there
traveling to find his brothers. His dreams kept coming back to
his mind. Strange and haunting dreams.
There's almost a simplicity about Joseph at this point in
his life. And verse 28 tells us that he
was actually sold. He was sold for 20 shekels.
It looks like I had that messed up and it didn't amount to much.
Just a couple of shekels. You know, you think about it,
Ten brothers, 20 shekels, a couple of shekels each for each
each brother. Not much.
What are they going to do with a couple of shuffles each by
selling this dirty money? If you want to say, I can only
imagine that you have that. I'll got horrible money rotting
in your pocket from selling your brother into slavery.
But what led to him being sold? And we'll need to go back a few
verses to understand that we see that they see him coming in the
distance. And in verse 18, verse 18 says
they saw him afar off where they saw him in the distance.
Now how did they see him? How did they recognize him afar
off? And he may have one maybe a kind
of a gate about him. You know, there's horse people
in here who understand the gait of a horse.
You know, Lizzie's really good at recognizing a horse from a
distance that she may recognize because of the gate, because it
walks the way it walks, the way maybe it swings its head or
whatever. Maybe, maybe these brothers
recognize the way he was walking, but I don't think so.
I think they recognize it because he had his coat on,
right? Just coat him any colors.
They recognize that that was Joseph from a distance.
They saw him. They knew who he was.
They saw him coming. They couldn't think of anything
else except for that coat, because that coat represented
everything that they did tested about Joseph.
And it was just absolutely just even the very appearance of
Joseph, we're told, to rouse their fury.
We can read that in verse 4 of 37.
They saw him in the distance and before he reached them, before
they had a chance to even hear his voice or understand why
Joseph was coming to see him, they began to plot to kill him.
And they said, here comes the dreamer, verse 20.
We'll kill him. We'll throw him into a pit.
We'll lie about it and it'll say, well, Ferocious Animal laid
him up and then we'll see if he's going to do any more
dreaming about that. I can imagine them saying that
to one one another. Over time these brothers had
sowed seeds of hatred in their heart and these seeds had found
fertile soil in these brothers heart and it grew and they
watered it with jealousy. They cultivated them with
selfish selfishness and now they begin to flower and bloom into
an ugly, selfish, horrible spreading virus like substance
in these boys hearts. And their hatred was actually
mostly all of it was disproportionate to any and all
of Joseph's offenses against his brothers.
You see, Joseph didn't buy the coat.
He didn't specifically go buy that coat for himself.
His father made it for him. Joseph didn't initiate the
dreams. Those were given to him by God.
They come from another source not of his own.
And so their hatred of him was absolutely disproportionate to
the any false offence that he may have done.
And it needs to be a reminder for us that hatred does not need
a reason. Hatred does not need a reason.
When a man or a woman hates, they just hate for whatever
reason they have in their mind. And that it needs just a small
corner of a selfish heart. And in that and from that little
place, that hatred, the fury of venom and vengeance will be
coming out in ways that are unexplainable.
Now the original plan for his future according to his brothers
is here in verse 18. Is there in verse 18.
They wanted to conspire against him to kill him.
But now I want to turn the focus to Reuben, the oldest brother.
Reuben comes with an intervention if you want to say
he proposes an amendment to the to the motion.