We tend to forget that in the ancient world, the producing of color in a garment was something that was a very laborious process, and that those garments that were colored were exceedingly expensive.
But this tunic not only had one color, but it had a huge variety of colors, making it all the more expensive and all the more treasured. And this would be an extraordinary gift that Jacob gave to his son. The story of Joseph and the coat of many colors, of course, is a favorite in children's books and Sunday school lessons. This incredible account, which covers several chapters in the book of Genesis, shows us how God can actually work in the midst of tragedy. And Joseph's virtuous life points us to the much bigger story of redemption. This week on Renewing Your Mind, you're hearing select messages from a special 8-series collection, which includes R.C. Sproul's 20-message series on the life of Joseph. You can request your copy while supplies last with a year-end donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.
And we thank you for your generosity today, as today is the final day to give in support of Ligonier's year-end campaign to deliver even more trusted teaching to more people in more languages in 2025. Here's Dr. Sproul from his series, The Life of Joseph. We're going to look at the life of the patriarch Joseph in the book of Genesis.
It's a remarkable thing to study the life of this man. There's something extraordinary about Joseph. We're accustomed, as we read the biblical account of the patriarchs of the Old Testament and even of the prophets, to see their portraits being painted warts and all. The Bible doesn't hesitate to broadcast for the whole world to read the sins of the saints. We know of the great wickedness in some of the acts of King David, of some of the deceitfulness manifested even in Father Abraham, and so on. But we have to press very hard and very close to find anything blameworthy in the character of Joseph. In fact, so extraordinary is the virtue manifested by this man that throughout church history many interpreters of the Old Testament have seen in Joseph an Old Testament type of our Lord Himself.
Now, for that to be the case remains a matter of speculation, but I certainly understand why such speculation has been ventured in light of the sterling character of this man. The basic narrative of Joseph begins in the 37th chapter of the book of Genesis. We are told earlier, of course, of his birth from his mother Rachel. And you recall that Jacob, who had so many sons, had to work seven years for his father-in-law Laban in order that he might receive in marriage the hand of his daughter Rachel, Jacob's beloved. But Laban deceived him, and after that seven-year period of labor, he was given Leah instead of Rachel to be his wife, and she was the mother of most of Jacob's sons.
And he had to labor another seven years before he was able to marry Rachel. And Joseph was the child of Jacob's old age and the firstborn to Rachel. Now, with that background, let's look at chapter 37 that picks up the narrative of Joseph's life.
Chapter 37 begins with these words, "'Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan, and this is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father.'" Now, some have argued that at the very beginning of the narrative of Joseph that we see a wart, that we see a defect in his character because here is a brother who is squealing, as it were, on his other brothers, bringing a bad report of them to his own father, a report that would not be taken kindly by the brothers. But if we read back into this text the whole character of Joseph that is manifested throughout his biographical sketch in Scripture, we would be inclined to think that though the report was negative, it was presumably true and that Joseph could be excused for giving a higher response to a higher duty, namely fidelity to his father than fidelity to his brother. It's a stretch to be sure, but it also hints at a similar incident in the life of Jesus, where we know next to nothing of Jesus' boyhood years save for the occasion when he visited the temple in Jerusalem at age 12 and where he stayed behind to talk with the doctors in the temple on matters of theology, and his parents were unaware that he had been left behind, presumably. The men were traveling with the men and the women with the women, and Joseph presumably thought that he was with Mary, and Mary thought that he was with Joseph and so on. But when they hurried back to Jerusalem and found their son disputing with the theologians in the temple and they rebuked him, Jesus' answer to his parents was, do you not know that I must be about my father's business?
So that Jesus' behavior on that point was not sinful but righteous in that he was obeying his father. Now again, I'm stretching this a little bit and trying to bend over backwards to be gracious to Joseph, and I'm assuming that something of the same sort was taking place here when Joseph was giving his father an honest report. In any case, we read on in verse 3, now Israel, that's of course the name for Jacob that God had renamed him, now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age, and also he made him a tunic of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.
Now what follows is not only the history of a boy, but it becomes foundational to the history of the entire nation of Israel, and it is a history that takes a pivotal turn that is rooted in human envy and jealousy. Early on in the narrative of Joseph, the salient point is introduced that for whatever reason of his personality, it's clear that his brothers despised him. They would not even speak peaceably with him, which means that their attitude toward their brother was one of belligerence, they were bellicose, they were hostile toward him. And their hostility was rooted and grounded initially at least, not so much in what Joseph did, but in what Joseph's father did. They despised Joseph because of the special affection that he received from their father.
Isn't it interesting how hostile were the people of the church of Israel toward Jesus when Jesus was seen to be the beloved of the father? But here in this case, we have a sibling rivalry with a vengeance. Now, anyone who is the parent of more than one child has to deal with the problem of sibling rivalries.
They are customary in the home, and unless you've been a parent, it's hard to know the struggle that parents have at times with showing favoritism to their own children. And we're told that Jacob did that, that Jacob loved Joseph more than he loved the rest of his sons. It doesn't mean that he didn't love the rest of his children, but he had a greater love for Joseph. And we are told that the reason for that is that because Joseph was special in that he was the firstborn to Rachel and was the child of Jacob's old age. Of course, he was older when he had Benjamin, but in any case, sometimes parents do favor one child over another. And usually the parents say, well, I love each one equally, but I love you differently.
And I don't think parents can really all that accurately discern the relative degree of affection that they have for their own children. But in any case, Israel loved Joseph more than his children, and he manifested this by giving him a tunic of many colors. And we've even had a Broadway play called The Technicolor Coat, Joseph's Technicolor Coat. The thing that makes this so dramatic in the ancient world was the things that we take for granted of being able to go to the shopping center and enter into the clothing store and choose our garments from myriads of colors, all of which are produced by the manufacturer with all kinds of exotic dyes and so on. We tend to forget that in the ancient world, the producing of color in a garment was something that was a very laborious process and that those garments that were colored were exceedingly expensive. And most of the garments worn by the semi-nomads of the mid-eastern region were black or brown or sometimes white, but not the rich colors and hues of the rainbow, the reds and the yellows and the greens and so on.
But this tunic not only had one color, but it had a huge variety of colors, making it all the more expensive and all the more treasured. And this would be an extraordinary gift that Jacob gave to his son to single him out from all the rest of the boys to receive this multicolored garment. And I can't imagine a parent doing that without knowing in advance that this would be a point of contention among them, because this was an obvious sign of favoritism. But we can't fault Joseph. He is the recipient of the gift, not the giver. But when his brother saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, not their father.
They hated their brother and could not speak peaceably to him. Now, to make matters worse, Joseph receives a gift not only from his earthly father, but he receives a gift from his heavenly father. He is endowed with the charismatic ability to interpret dreams. Now, Joseph had a dream, we read in verse 5, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more.
So he said to them, please hear this dream which I have dreamed. There we were binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright.
And indeed your sheaf stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf. And his brothers said to them, oh, so shall you indeed reign over us, or shall you indeed have dominion over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Now, it is one thing that God would give this dream to Joseph. It's another thing for him to tell them this dream. And again, we can only speculate here about Joseph's motive. If we take the dark side of it, we can see Joseph as a young boy, seventeen years old, who is sick and tired of being despised and hated by his brothers and being mistreated unjustly because of his father's favor. And so, in a sense, to get even with them, he gets this wonderful dream where he has this vision of these sheaves of wheat that are all bowing down before him. And so, he comes to them, and we could interpret it this way since the Bible doesn't give us voice inflections and that sort of thing, that Joseph says, just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait.
You guys think you're something, but I just had a dream, and that dream told me that someday you guys are going to be groveling in the dirt in front of me. Now, the truth of the matter is that the dream was prophetic, and the dream was fulfilled to the very detail that Joseph spoke about. Now, we ask, as I say, why Joseph shared the content of this dream to his brothers.
On the one hand, the dark side, it could be that he was motivated to gloat over his brothers and to glory in the favoritism, to be a self-righteous, obnoxious, seventeen-year-old boy who is rubbing it in his brothers' faces for the favoritism that he has received. On the other hand, a more charitable judgment toward Joseph would be that Joseph could have been instructed by God in this dream to make the contents of this dream known. Normally, when God reveals something in Scripture to one of His prophets, the purpose of that revelation is to make it known for the edification of others, and that would be consistent with Joseph explaining the content of the dream. If we learn anything about Joseph through examining his life, we know that Joseph was not stupid, and he would have had to assume that if his brothers envied him and hated him now, after he tells them this dream, it's only going to exacerbate this situation. But I don't know whether his relating of it was out of obedience to God or out of being spiteful towards his brothers.
But let's go on. Then he dreamed, in verse 9, still another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, Look, I have dreamed another dream, and this time the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bow down to me. And so he told it to his father and his brothers, and his father rebuked him and said to him, What is this dream that you have dreamed?
Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you? And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Now Jacob is angry, and Jacob joins in the rebuke against Joseph for sharing this second dream, because the second dream not only indicates that his eleven brothers will sometime bow down before him, but his parents as well.
And this is a little bit more than Jacob can handle. Remember, in Israel the patriarchs were just that, patriarchs. And it was a patriarchal society where the father was the one who was to be exalted in the family, not the son. We know, for example, that in the Jewish custom when the father walked into a room where the sons were present, it was the duty of the sons instantly to stand up out of respect to the appearance of the father. There was only one exemption to that particular custom, one exception to the rule, and that would be if the son grew up and became a rabbi. The office of the rabbi was so honored among the Jewish people that this custom would be reversed. If the son who was the rabbi walked into the room, the father would rise out of honor to him. But Joseph was a seventeen-year-old boy.
He was not a rabbi. And so now he's suggesting that his father is going to bow down before him, and Jacob rebukes him. But it's interesting that when we are told the rest of the reaction, we are told that the brothers increased their envy to Jacob, but Jacob meditated on this.
Even though he was upset and rebuked Joseph, he still did not obviously come to the absolute conclusion that this was just a dream of Joseph's vain imagination but could be from God. There is a message for us in this initial part of the narrative history of Joseph, particularly for those of us who are parents. Not all of us are parents, but all of us have been children. We don't necessarily all have brothers or sisters or siblings to have to deal with. But we can see how much destruction can come to a family and into a home when jealousy destroys the mutual love and affection among children and in their relationship with their parents. And so I think we have to see that the showing of favoritism is a very foolish thing to do and can have extraordinary negative consequences in a home. Now, I think perhaps the way we should do is try to manifest the love that we have for our children as clearly as we possibly can. That sometimes includes and demands the giving of punishment because the Scripture tells us that those who do not punish their children hate their children. And we have that wrong in our culture. We somehow think that what we want more than anything else is for our children to love us, where our first obligation is to love them.
That was R.C. Sproul on this Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind from his series, The Life of Joseph. This series is actually 20 messages and details the life of Joseph and the lessons we can learn. We've included this series on a special eight series DVD and MP3 CD collection that isn't available for sale, but we'll send it to you when you give a year-end gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800 435 4343. We'll also give you a year-long subscription to Table Talk, our monthly Bible study and devotional magazine.
Each month, read articles from gifted teachers on a variety of topics and spend your mornings in that day's devotional. We're only hours away from the end of 2024, so any gift, large or small, is greatly appreciated to help us start the new year with momentum and strength as we have an aggressive strategic plan to serve global pastors and the rising generation with biblically faithful resources. If you're still considering your year-end giving, you can hear more about those plans when you go back and listen to the December 13th episode of Renewing Your Mind wherever you listen to podcasts. Give today at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes, and we'll send you this special edition eight series collection and Table Talk magazine. Thank you. We'll begin the new year with R.C. Sproul considering what true repentance looks like from Psalm 51, so be sure to join us tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .
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