The Bible is not full of stories about perfect people who serve God by living perfect lives. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And today on Truth for Life, we're the book of Genesis looking at the life of Joseph. Alastair Begg gives us a brief overview of his messy background before we dive into a study of the trials and triumphs he faced in life. We'll learn how God uses our trials and our less than perfect families to prepare us for the roles He has planned for us.
Yeah. Uh He provides for us probably the classic Old Testament illustration of the New Testament truth. Summarized in Romans 8 and 28. All things work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose. There is perhaps no other character to whom we may go in the whole of the Old Testament than this character, Joseph.
who quite amazingly provides this awesome summary of this very, very important verse.
Now what you need to understand in this narrative progression here is that while it is not chronicled for us with Step by step and pinpoint accuracy. It is clear that At points where there is silence, there is a fair progression of time. At points where it says they stopped, they obviously stopped for a fair length of time, because you will see that you go between verse 24 in chapter 30 and the verses later on, and in that you've got the space of 17 years that is all wrapped up in the formative stages of the life of Joseph. And sometime after he was born, however short or long, maybe months, maybe years, His father determines that they're going to move. He was going to have a lot of tearing in his life.
He was going to have a lot of times when he didn't get to say goodbye. He was going to have to learn how to weep, learn how to deal with the pain, learn how to deal with having his insides ripped out of him. And even in these early circumstances, God was forming and framing his tiny life in preparation for what would be. Oh, this is a wonderful, wonderful story. Do you think his eyes narrowed?
When he heard the question In verse thirty?
Now you have gone off because you long to return to your father's house. But why did you steal my gods? Oh, now if he had any inkling of it at all, if he'd been hanging around at his mum's skirts, and if he had been aware of this, goodness gracious, do you think he's not waiting to hear the answer to this? And Jacob answered Laban, I was afraid. I thought you take your daughters away by force.
But if you find anyone who has your gods, he shall not live. In the presence of our relatives, see for yourself whether there's anything of yours here with me. And if so, take it.
Now Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen the gods. And you can only but imagine. as Joseph heard his mother. From the top of her camel. As she sat.
On the saddle bags. that held the gods for which her dad was looking. And she sinned her soul not only by stealing them. not only by being deceitful enough to sit on them. But she went the extra mile and opened her mouth and lied through her teeth even when she probably didn't have to.
Deceit will always do that. One deceitful action sends into process a cycle that is almost unstoppable. Listen to her from on top of the camel, verse 35, she said to her father, Don't be angry, my Lord, that I cannot stand up in your presence. I'm having my period.
So he searched. but could not find the household gods. And then if you'll turn to the end of the chapter, what a wealth. of material is tied up in the concluding Verse of chapter thirty-one. They make a covenant with one another, they establish the lines of demarcation, they offer sacrifices together, they sit down and they have a meal.
At the end of verse 54, And after they had eaten they spent the night there. Those of you who have moved any vast distance know this experience well. It's etched indelibly in your memory forever. You'll never quite shake what it was like. All the anticipation of the evening.
All the gathering of the family. All the union and the reunion and all the joy that was there, except for the fact that there was a cloud which descended over the event. And the cloud was the prospect of the morning. Because when the morning dawned, The party was over. and the separation Was inevitable.
So you couldn't have all the joy of the evening union? without the prospect of the morning party. And there in verse fifty-five, Is a painting? Early the next morning, Laban kissed his grandchildren. and his daughters.
And he blessed them. And then he left. And went home. Only the hardest of hearts. Can read that verse.
and walk away. Do you think he squeezed those tiny boys? Do you think he grabbed the teenage kids and the ones that were now in their early twenties. Don't you think he grabbed them tight and held them close? And don't you think that he was magnetized?
to Rachel and Leah. and had to turn his back on them. and walk away. probably choosing not to look back. Allowing simply the rise and the fall of his shoulders to display the emotion of his deep-seated longing for that family unit.
And what does a small boy make of all that? And in that All things were working together for good for this young lad who was called of God according to his purpose. You see, when we sing Newton's great hymn, Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come, that means something in all of our lives. And it isn't important that we can be in each other's experience. It's not important even that we understand each other's, but it is important that we recognize that through the pain and through the sorrow and through the suffering and through the heartache and through the confusion and through it all, as Andre Kraus said.
I've learned to trust in Jesus. I've learned to trust His Word. And if I never had a problem. I wouldn't know how to solve them. I never know.
What faith in God? Could do. Through it all. I think Joseph would have played that. on hystereal If he'd had one.
Are you still with me? When Herod trembled, Jerusalem trembled, that's what the record tells us. The arrival of the wise men. Brought this question reverberating to the core of Herod's being: Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For we've seen his star in the east and we've come to worship him.
And Herod was troubled, and all of Jerusalem with him. In other words, when he started to freak out, the whole place freaked out. And so I am absolutely without question. that the fear and distress which gripped the life of Jacob in the prospect of facing his brother in chapter 32 reverberated through the whole family. Verse 7 of 32, in great fear and distress, Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups.
And I wager that Joseph knew that there was something up with his dad. is the news of the 400 men. 400 men. He just kept a little bit of it in his mind. There's 400 men coming with my uncle Esau.
Why is he sending 400 men? Why is my dad so upset? And the reverberations of fear and distrust, you see, would work their way down through the family. And the hushed conversations. would fuel the young man's Expectations.
What do you think that he made of the night when his dad left them alone? Genesis 32, 22. When Jacob gets up and takes his wives in the night, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and he crosses the ford of the Jabbok, in the night they have torches. Very few because they want to do it circumspectly. And they're waking the children from their beds and they're saying, Come on now, we're going across the river.
And the kids are saying, Why do we have to go in the middle of the night, for goodness sake? And the smaller ones are saying, What? I don't understand what's going on. And the father said, Look, just be quiet. Just do what your mother tells you.
We're out of here. And so he ushers them all across. The ford of the Jabbaq. And verse 23, and after he sent them across the stream, he sends over all his possessions. And Jacob was left alone.
Now I don't know if this has ever happened to you. But I know for sure that if I were to go through this, there would only be one question in my mind: why is Dad not with us? What's dad doing? And the fact of the matter was that dad was meeting with God. Dad didn't even know that he was about to meet with God.
God was going to come, as it were, and wrestle him to the ground and say, Hey, Chisler, I want to give you a new name. Hey deceitful, I want to turn your life around. Hey, I want to make you a brand new dad. I want to make you a whole new husband. And in the morning when he returned, With this staff which had become a characteristic of his life.
Now he leans upon his staff. And he limps. As he comes back into the family. What the world's going on with you? Where do we get a limp all of a sudden?
Do you think Jacob told him? I don't know, but I don't think so. Because Jacob Is circuitous all the time. He confronts very little, he says very little. As we'll see.
Did he use it as an opportunity to stamp in Joseph's tiny life and into his young memory the sinews of faith? It certainly impelled him in some way because in chapter 33, when they get to Shechem, he sets up an altar. And as he sets up an altar, he sets his family. Apart from the surrounding culture, he distinguishes them. It's almost as though the experience of thirty-two starts to move him on.
And then we have this dreadful experience in thirty-four. The violation of the one daughter's purity. You think you could have eleven sons and one daughter and the eleven sons wouldn't look out for the girl? There's not a chance. You don't think those eleven boys watched out for Dinah all the time, everywhere?
Sure they did? Even if nine of them took the day off, there were still two left to look after her. Do you think they noticed? When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite Saw her. Do you think That they cared When he saw him walk away with her, Do you think their hearts didn't burn?
with the deepest of passion. When he had his way with her. And what of this boy? Ten or eleven years old? Hardly cognizant of how the human reproductive system really works and all of this hushed conversation and this mass aggravation on the part of his elder brothers, something to do with Dinah and what some fellow did to Dinah.
And as he looks away to his father Jacob and hears Jacob saying, now let's be careful here. We don't want to become a disgrace to the surrounding culture. And the brothers looking at one another and say, how can you be a father and think like this? And so they take matters into their own hands. They set up this amazingly deceitful scheme.
They get these guys in the most compromised of physical positions and then they drive in under cover of darkness and they butcher the whole place and they bring in the outsiders and they plunder the whole of Shechem. And in it all, God is working to form the character of this lad called Joseph. And so did Bethel. Chapter thirty five Jacob had been there before. He had been there, remember the ladder in 28 when he was fleeing from Esau?
He says to the people, purify yourselves. He says, let's make sure that we experience God's presence before we go on from here. And then in the record We add the story of bereavement into the home of Jacob. I don't have time to go through it all. Do it as your homework.
You'll find the funeral of Deborah. Everybody must have loved Deborah. That's why she's in the biblical record. Just a verse now, Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died 358 and was buried under the oak below Bethel. A solemn time in their lives.
And then the tragic loss of his wife, Rachel, for whom he'd worked for 14 years. All the expectation on Joseph's part of having a wee brother. By this time he's twelve. He's the closest of all the kids to what it will mean to have a little one. Those who are up in their late teens and early twenties, it's really so far gone.
They could be the father of the child. There's really only one with the prospect of companionship. And that's Joseph. Mom, when are you going to have the baby? Mom, do you think it'll be a brother?
Will it be a sister? What will happen? And then finally the day that mingles joy and sorrow. As the time of her delivery comes and as she goes into the pangs and pains of childbirth and as the contractions increase and as the sense of terror grips her and finally as in giving birth her very life ebbs out from her and again in the life of this boy tragedy and the dark threads of pain and sorrow and bereavement come crashing into his life and into his experience. And then the record of the death of his grandfather.
and another burial service, and the inevitable thoughts about the frailty of life and the reality of death. and the necessity of faith. And in the midst of all of that, the unthinkable. Verse twenty two Following the death of this most treasured of his earthly companions, Rachel. While Israel, i.e.
Jacob, was living in that region, His oldest boy went in and slept with his father's concubine Bilha. And all we're told is He heard of it. No action. How callous. Can a person be?
Your father has just lost the wife of his devotion. The lady with whom you now are amorously involved, is in all matters of technicality and emotional relationship your father's wife. And in the very Breath of the death of Rachel. You're involved. an incestuous Activity.
When we get to chapter 49, we'll realize. That Jacob had not forgotten about it, but until then we have to leave it aside. Chapter 36, The Lineage of Esau. And chapter 37, verse 2. We're now back.
at the beginning of our sermon. Face to face. Looking into the eyes. of a young boy Age seventeen. Who has been through more than most?
in the course of his formative years.
Now I have deliberately taken all of this time to give you a flavor. of the background. And I commend you to further study. And I want you to notice. That if you think you came from a dysfunctional background, You got a long way to go.
And indeed, we all came from a dysfunctional background. Sin makes an individual dysfunctional. I don't even need anyone else in the room to be dysfunctional. But when you take my sin plus your sin and a few other people's sins, then we will all reveal the implications of the fact that we are out of alignment and therefore our wheels turn. Turn in different directions.
Let me summarize it with just a number of thoughts. In the rough and tumble of a less than perfect family life, God was preparing Joseph. for the role he'd planned for him. If ever there was a young boy who, by the age of 17, had enough basis for blaming everything on his past, it was Joseph. But he didn't do it.
He somehow realized that more spiritual progress is made through failure and tears than through success and laughter. He realized that God's grace was greater than all the daunting complexities of his early life. And the only explanation for the existence of Joseph and the role that he played is found in the electing grace of God. There is no human reason whatsoever as to why it should be that Joseph could ever emerge from this carnage. Except That God purposed that it would be so.
So, loved ones, I want to say to you: don't allow a bunch of books. To try and explain your life for you. In terms of the chiseling and channels and chains of your past to excuse you from your own activities or to legitimize your own impoverishments of mind and spirit, listen. God is greater than all of that. And he brings beauty.
out of ashes. He gives the oil of joy for mourning. He gives the garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness. And our trials, as Augustine said, Come. to prove us and to improvise.
One final thought. Here in these formative 17 years, there is a striking reminder of the impact that a father's life. We'll have upon a boy. I heard a girl. Jacob was not a good illustration of integrity.
He was poor when it came to decisiveness. He was slow when it came to action. He was the master of passivity. He sat when he should have stood, and he stood when he should have sat. He was not a perfect dad.
But God chose to use that imperfect dad to be the dad to the boy that he had purposed to be his redeemer of his people in the experience of Egypt. And indeed, one of the most moving scenes for which I can hardly wait is when Joseph, when Joseph gets to his dad in his old age and he just absolutely smothers him. I mean, the scene is pregnant with emotion when they're finally reunited. But there's no recrimination on Joseph's part. There's no recrimination with his brothers.
His brothers say, you know, we're sorry we put you in the pit. We're sorry we didn't sorry. He said, hey, listen, shh. God send me here. No, no, Joseph, you don't understand.
Hang on, hang on. We put... No, no, no. You don't understand. God is sovereign in these things.
And dad. I know you're not perfect. But dad You're my dad. And I love you, man. Yeah.
I love you.
Some of you kids Back off your old man.
Some of you dads? Quit putting your head in the noose that comes by the latest book that arrives on your shelf, telling you that unless you are got this right, that right, this right, and everything right, you will have nothing but garbage and carnage over your life. Don't believe it. Go for the gold. Do your best.
Trust God. And at the end of the day, He will honor his name. He will vindicate your faithfulness. And although You haven't been perfect. Out of the chaos.
and rubble of the background. He will raise that. as a standard for his glory. Uh Enlisting the Truth for Life with Alastair Begg. Our team here at Truth for Life is very encouraged when you reach out to let us know how God is using Alistair's teaching in your life.
We recently heard from Ruth, who listens in West Scotland. She wrote to say, I have only just discovered you, and I am so glad. Thank you for your inspiration, which comes from your adoration of Jesus and His teaching. I want you to know when you donate to Truth for Life, you're helping to bring clear, relevant Bible teaching to people like Ruth. all around the globe.
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You know, it's rarely a problem for someone to have a favorite song or book or hobby, but when you have a favorite sibling or child, That can be devastating. Tomorrow, we'll learn how family favoritism became a significant issue for Jacob and his family. I hope you can join us. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Yeah.
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